


Between the Stars

by fangirl_outlet



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben Solo Deserved Better, Canon Compliant, Dark Rey (Star Wars), F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Dyad (Star Wars), HEA, Nerdy Ben Solo, Post-Canon, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Skywalker Family Drama, Slow Burn, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Fix-It, This works with that shitty ending to Tros, Time Travel, World Between Worlds, dash of smut, dyads don't like to be apart, i think, the force is depressed too, weird force lore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:28:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 45,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22010317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fangirl_outlet/pseuds/fangirl_outlet
Summary: "A dyad in the Force...a power like life itself."Fate brought Ben and Rey together with a magnetism unseen in the galaxy in millennia. Despite the war, despite their bloodlines, despite even their own will at times, the Force found them a path to each other.But with their bond frayed by the power of death -- is there anyway they can find their way back together?
Relationships: Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 80
Kudos: 165
Collections: TROS Reylo Fix-it Fics, The Rise of Skywalker: Fix-It Fic Edition, Things that make tros hurt a little less





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Crafting this story as an close-to-cannon-as-possible theory on how Ben will come back through the World Between Worlds, starting right after the events of TROS. 
> 
> Ben Solo is alive! And this is just to tide us over until DLF gives us our boy back.
> 
> If you're interested in any of the WBW research that went into this fic (6 months worth) feel free to leave a comment or DM me on Twitter: @outletfangirl

The kiss nearly killed him.

Feeling her, Rey, alive in his arms, heart beating frantically against his own – Ben had never felt more alive.

And then it was all over. All too soon.

It was there, deep in his bones, even as his lips were pressed against hers. Ben pulled her closer, ever closer, chasing her kiss, willing to chase it for as long as she let him. Because she, Rey, was heaven sent. And he laughed, the ridiculous of it all – that after everything – the snarls, the yells, the fights, the obvious pining– she was there and kissing him and smiling up at him.

But the hollowness spread too quickly, and Ben felt his vision darken. He watched as the elation on her face crumpled into concern along her brow, her eyes unregistering.

The last thing Ben Solo saw was her, Rey, holding him in her arms.

“Ben, baby, open your eyes.”

Slowly, Ben did. At first he was blinded by the brightness all around him, like he was in the center of a supernova. But as the world, or wherever he was, came into focus, Ben saw her. His mother.

She was as he remembered her from when he was little. Long brown hair hanging down in waves, a single braid at the crown of her head the only sign of the royalty she typically appeared as. Her soft, flowing white robes billowed out towards him. Long gone were the worry lines he etched into her face over the past seven years – she was the sweet princess his father regaled him with stories about, the one who tucked him into bed at night with soft kisses on his forehead.

Ben fell into Leia’s outstretched arms and let the scent of pine and apples wash over him.

They didn't speak -- they didn't need to. It was just that: a mother and a son holding each other for the first time in over a decade – the resentment, the pain, the fear, the guilt, the distance, all of it forgiven in their embrace. His tears fell hot and fast onto her sleeve as she shushed his whimpers with every caress of his hair.

“Am I dead?” Ben asked, when he was able to pull himself away.

“No,” Leia answered with a soft smile. “You’re going somewhere else. But I had to say goodbye.”

“I don’t understand. Why can’t I go with you?”

Leia held his face, “My brave, brave boy. It’s not your time. You have to go home.” She pressed a kiss to his forehead, like she used to when he was little. "Our family has always had such rotten luck, and made too many bad choices. But you can change that Ben. I believe that."

She paused, tears glittering in her eyes. Her breathing a little fainter, as if she was being drawn away from him with each exhale. 

“Mom,” Ben stilled, straining for one more look at her. “Will I remember any of this? Will I remember…you?”

Leia shook her head, slowly.

“No baby. But you won’t be alone. You never were.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Be with me…”

“Be with me...”

“Be with-–”

A sob ripped out of Rey’s throat, ruining what little hold she had on this meditative state – not that it mattered. They weren’t out there. He wasn’t out there. A thousand kriffing generations lived in her and for what? A bunch of silence?

It had been three months since everything happened on Exegol. Since the rebellion won because the spirits of Jedi past flooded her system and the Emperor destroyed himself with his own power.

She had learned something that day, about the Force, about herself.

In some gruesome twist of fate, she learned she might have Palpatine's blood in her veins but it wasn’t his power that flowed through her. The awakening in the Force was her own. Her mind for finding the beauty in broken things could never have come from a man who corrupted anything beautiful in the world. Palpatine believed it was only the midichlorians that anchored the Force together and he sought to harness them all – but Rey had learned better. There was more than that. She felt it herself with Leia, with Luke, with Finn, with that snake on Pasaana, with…Ben Solo.

But for all the good it did her. A dyad in the force. That’s what she’s supposed to be. That’s what she was. And then Ben Solo was taken from her. He was so solid and clear against her, the tingle his soft ravenous lips left against her's lingering, as he smiled. Then he fell and faded away in her arms.

And she was left with a raw, blunt cut in the core of her mind – no, deeper than that -- her soul. It was a phantom ache that lingered in every movement, every breath. It was easier to almost cease all of it. The absence of a presence she was only sometimes aware of was now all she could think about, staring at the vast emptiness in her bond.

Rey didn’t bother to tuck herself into her cot. Curling in on herself, she hugged her knees to keep from shuddering too hard as the sobs she stopped trying to stop poured from her.

“Ben,” she choked out. “Ben please…be with me.”

Rose slumped on the mess hall table, her head in her hands. She and Kaydel, her fellow Commander, had been staring up at Rey’s bunker for the last thirty minutes, waiting to see if their three-bunned friend would make an appearance for dinner tonight. She missed out on lunch, and breakfast before that, and the kitchen staff were starting to wonder why they weren’t running out of food anymore.

“Should we bring her a nuna-leg? They are her favorite,” Kaydel asked, checking her watch for the fifth time.

“Rey’s still not out of her room?” Finn asked, as he and Poe slid onto the bench across from Rose.

He caught eyes with her, wondering if concern for their mutual friend would get Rose to talk to him again. And of course, it did.

“No,” Rose said with a sigh, sinking closer to the table. “She’s barely left that room since she came back from that place and… I’m running out of ideas to coax her out.”

The two women weren’t really expecting to become close confidants. Rose, in fact, was a bit intimidated by the infamous Rey, someone Finn couldn’t stop raving about. She was what drove him to nearly desert the Resistance nearly a year ago. And when Finn started to pull away from Rose and instead hung around with Poe and the jedi-in-training – even after their kiss on Crait – Rose was – as bitter as it tasted in her mouth – a bit jealous.

But that all changed when she and Rey ended up on Mon Cala with Leia a few months ago – ready to face off with a bunch of rowdy anti-resistance rabble-rousers set on trying to score a few points with the First Order by targeting the general. Between the hard-knock lessons in diplomacy, the blaster fire, and a well-aged high maintenance ship like the Millennium Falcon – Rose and Rey had actual conversations and then jokes and then inside jokes and then even a secret handshake. 

After Exegol, Rose and Connix and Poe and Finn were all just relieved they were still alive. They assumed Rey was too, as she cried and hugged them all tightly. After the final battle they were all focused on what they had to do next. They assumed Rey was too, as she packed and unpacked and repacked her belongings. After reports came in of former First Order settlements and officers were not willing to embrace a change, they were prepping for a whole new kind of fight. They assumed Rey was too, as she gave them space to debate the politics.

But then Rey stopped coming to meals. She stopped walking among the trees. She stopped tinkering on the Falcon.

In the three months after surviving the Sith’s final attempt of revenge, Rey had all but faded from the world.

“What do you think our odds would be of physically dragging her out of there?” Poe asked. “Girl needs to eat. And get some natural light. And probably shower.”

“Not good.” The rest answered in unison.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, none of them really touching their food. Then they heard a rustling in the leaves up on the hill.

Rey, wrapped up in a dark green poncho, her white garb now tinged brown with caked-on dirt, emerged from her bunker. She slinked down the hill, making her way to the mess hall with her hood drawn low over her eyes. Her friends watched as Rey picked out a single nuna-leg and few soggy green roots silently from the buffet line.

The mess hall was still crowded with loyal resistance fighters – many of whom had reforged lost families during the war in this very room and up among the stars, and now they were just waiting eagerly for their next order from Generals Finn and Poe. But whatever new adventure awaited them didn’t distract from the history they just lived through, and already the legends were spreading like wildfire amongst the ranks.

Of particular popularity nowaways, with the First Order loyalists pushing back against a new galaxy-wide regime change, was the rumor mill of what happened to the mysterious Supreme Leader Kylo Ren.

The whispers slithered around Rey as she avoided eye contact with her fellow fighters.

“ _I heard Kylo Ren deserted the First Order and tried to help us.”_

 _“No way! He’s a coward. He just ran when he saw the big bad old Sith guy come in.”_

_“I heard he was the spy that leaked information to Leia.”_

_“I heard he got himself blown up on that Final Order command ship.”_

_“I heard he made it to that place were Palpatine was and Rey killed him before she finished off the Emperor.”_

Rey’s metal tray crashed onto the floor.

“That’s a lie!” she spun around, hood falling off and her hair fanning out behind her. “Those are all LIES!”

The room around her fell quiet. No one who mentioned _him_ could move, they could barely breathe as the Force slowly snaked around their chests. Rey was panting, her brow furrowed and eyes hooded. Around her, the utensils, the trays, the tables, the trees themselves began to quake.

“Rey!” Finn shouted, running up and shaking her by the shoulders.

Rey blinked slowly, and the atmosphere in the room lightened considerably. A few startled resistance fighters were rubbing their chests, others were trying to take deep breaths but all had their wide eyes locked on her.

Realization dawning on her features, Rey pulled herself out of Finn’s reach and darted back up the hill. Without missing a beat, Rose and Finn chased after her while Poe and Kaydel made a beeline for the now restless troops muttering about their supposed-Jedi-savior.

Rose and Finn found Rey curled in the corner of her darkened bunker, the soft flickering light of her holo casting shadows on the walls. They approached slowly. Rose kneeled next to her, rubbing small circles between her shoulders.

“There’s so much you guys don’t know,” Rey said, slowly lifting her head and leaning it against Rose’s.

“About Kylo Ren?” Rose asked gently. “Is it true? Was he was there in that place with you? We never heard the full story.”

“You loved him didn’t you?” Finn said quietly, his eyes stoney. “You loved Kylo Ren.”

“Ben,” Rey snapped, but then her eyes softened with tears. “I killed Kylo Ren on the Death Star…with his own saber. The man in that -- that _place --_ with me was Ben Solo. And he fought with me. He saved my life.”

“He was a monster Rey!” Finn snapped back. “He led the First Order. Tortured Poe. Killed Han. Tried to kill all of us I don’t know how many times. His mother died because of him.”

“His mother died _for_ him,” tears were streaming down her face now. “He came back to the light, Finn. You don’t understand!”

Finn was about to shout back when Rose cut in – “Finn. Out. Now.”

He gaped at her for a moment, then turned on his heel and stormed out. Rose knew he was hovering just outside, but now was her best chance to get Rey, at this point a blubbering mess, Rey to open up.

And Rey did. Finally. Through tears and snot and hiccups, Rey told Rose everything about Ben – their time on Starkiller Base when she thought he was a monster. Their sudden force bond. What he shared with her when she felt her loneliest. How he tried to protect her from Palpatine as soon as he learned the truth. How he came back for her with nothing but a blaster – _because he’s an idiot_ , she laughed for the briefest moment – to try and save her. How he did, really, in the end. How, just when she finally thought she could spend the rest of her life kissing his face and being happy, she had to watch him just die in her arms. 

“And I can’t feel him anywhere,” Rey, finally talked out, shuddered.

Rose hugged Rey tight. The weight of everything she just told her was heavy in their corner of the bunker. Rey – strong Rey with the lightsaber and staff and magic force – wept openly and ugly next to her.

“It’s okay to feel lost Rey,” she started. “When Paige left -- when she _died_ \-- I didn’t even know if I was still in my own body. But you are going to get through this. I promise.”

Rey looked up at her with bleary eyes.

“And if you can’t do it for yourself right now. Then do it for him. You have to live for both of you now.”

Sometimes she forgot Rey was only two years older than her. With the mind powers and legends and the stories she had of nerf-herders on Jakku and all the planets she had seen, Rey always seemed to be so much…more than twenty years old.

But now, deflated and puffy-faced, Rey looked so young and tired. Rose saw that same exhaustion etched into her own face when she looked in the mirror, especially after Paige died. So like her older sister used to do, Rose tucked Rey into bed and stayed with her until her eyes finally shut and her breathing stopped shuddering.

After an hour, Rose made her way out from Rey’s room, shoulders tense as she prepared to now calm down a frantic Finn.

But what she found was something else entirely. Finn was staring up at the sky, brow furrowed but seemingly not zeroed in on Rey for once.

Rose noticed he had been more and more like that lately. He told her he was force-sensitive but wasn’t really sure how it worked. It wasn’t like there was a manual Rose could decipher for him and the only teacher was lost to him at the moment.

But there was Paige. Paige and her uncanny ability to know exactly what Rose was feeling before she could even sort it out herself. Paige and her strange luck with getting exactly what she needed at exactly the right time. Paige and her hope in something bigger than all of them. Rose didn’t understand the Force, or her sister’s connection to, but she knew how to listen. And she could still do that now.

“Finn? What is it? What do you feel?”

“Something’s off Rose,” he said, eyes stilled trained on the night sky. “More than just Rey – and her feelings are all over the place. But this is something else…something deeper…and it’s -- I don’t even know how to describe it. Turbulent? I have a bad feeling about this…”

Rose didn’t understand the Force, but she understood the people she loved and what they needed. She slid closer to Finn, and for the first time since he left her on that stupid mission and threw everything they had away for “the cause” -- she laid her head on his chest. They stood like that. Just holding each other, feeling someone solid and there as the uncertain future loomed just ahead of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ben is coming up next!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have decided that Ben Solo curses like a mofo even if its a cannonverse fic. Keep bare that in mind.

“ _When you’re being hunted by a creature in a mask.”_

_“Are you an angel?”_

_“Scruffy looking nerf herder!”_

_“Must be the truth serum talking.”_

_“Hold me like you did on that day on Naboo.”_

Stirring at the sound of distant whispers, Ben Solo willed himself to creak one eye open, then the other. And the first thing he saw was darkness, darkness splintered by streaks of light glittering delicately against the abyss. And he groaned. 

“Well,” he huffed, still flat on his back. “I guess this is being dead.”

All Ben could remember really was Rey. The heat of her skin against his. The way her eyes danced. The way she looked at him, his lips. The way her hands traced light circles at the edge of his jaw. The way her breath – blessedly back in her lungs – hitched when he grinned down at her.

Then he remembered the coldness. It started in his chest, prickly and painful, and snaked its way through his body until he was ladened with it. He remembered struggling to stay sitting upright, with Rey, even as his arm fell to his side and his vision darkened.

And then he was falling. He didn’t even feel his body hit the cavern floor. It was if he – or his soul or whatever it was – passed through the ground itself, the planet crust, the planet core. And he just fell in darkness until, well, now.

He guessed he expected…well, something more crowded for the afterlife. Especially considering how the galaxy has been at war with itself pretty much since it came into existence. He at least expected to see his parents, his uncle, hell, maybe even his grandfather. Wasn’t that the one upside being dead had? Reuniting with loved ones or some shit like that? Appearing as a force ghost if you tried hard enough? So where the hell was everyone?

Or, Ben started to wonder, was the better question --- where the hell was he?

Ben propped himself on his elbows and blew away a few strands of his dark locks from his eyes. Taking a long look around him, it didn’t appear that there was anything at all under him, but it felt solid. He wrapped his knuckles against whatever was supporting him, but there were no discerning features to it – it wasn’t smooth or rough or soft or cold. It just was.

His body was less battered than he remembered too. His shirt wasn’t sticking to the laceration on his back and his spine wasn’t shooting tremors from his crushed vertebrae – all of that was gone. His cheek wasn’t puffy or bleeding. His knee wasn’t pointing in the wrong direction. Poof. Like it never happened.

He figured spirits, if that’s what he was, were supposed to feel…disembodied? Because that was not the case. But he did feel lighter.

His body didn’t feel like a tightly coiled spring anymore, with the tension in its stiff metal curves the only thing holding the fragile walls of him from being blown apart by the tempest of his emotions. And his head, it was quiet. Ben couldn’t remember a time where it, he, everything was quiet.

_“If there’s a bright center to the universe, you’re on the planet that it’s farthest from.”_

_“I know.”_

_“The belonging you seek.”_

_“Your focus determines your reality.”_

Ben’s head jerked at the whispers. The voices sounded familiar... 

_“You were my brother!”_

_“You’re asking me to be rational.”_

“This is something else,” Ben mused. It was strange to hear his own voice in his ears.

With a chuckle he wasn’t entirely sure was appropriate for this particular situation, Ben remembered being thirteen years old.

Being a scrawny kid, lanky with limbs that had the coordination of a baby Tauntaun, Ben usually found himself slipping away from the other students Luke had started to bring together at the Jedi temple. They’d stare at him – his ears, his ease in lessons, his nose.

So, instead of sitting at a bonfire late at night playing spin the saber, he’d sneak into Luke’s restricted library – one of the perks of knowing the master well enough to guess the holocode was Ben’s own birthday. And he’d pour over the Jedi texts, the older, more obscure the better. Eventually, he’d scribble notes in the margins and debate the great Jedi of the past on the page. Luke would find him in the early morning, roll his eyes, and toss him a Nabooian pear.

Sitting here, wherever here was, Ben missed his books. And his little calligraphy set. If he was going to be stuck in limbo at least he could read, try and research his way out of here. He always enjoyed a good existential question.

_“I am a Jedi, like my father before me.”_

 _"_ _Luminous beings are we.”_

_“Ben…be with me.”_

Rey.

Ben knows that voice. That voice lived in the corner of his mind for the last two years. It reverberated in his bones. Like a tuning fork that found the perfect frequency. He knows that voice and would know that voice across a sea of burning stars.

Rey.

Closing his eyes, Ben reached out with his feelings and found himself in a wind tunnel of the Force. It pressed down, up, all around him. It wasn’t angry or cold like a thunderstorm but swirled around him in a chaotic vortex.

But in everything he was feeling in the Force, he didn’t feel her. He always felt her. Their bond had been there, a tiny anchor in the back of his mind since he forced his way into her memories and she shoved her way through his. Now there was a stream cutting across that bond, wiping away any trace of a scent or a trail on the other side.

Dyads didn’t work that way.

Ben would know. He spent a year pouring over his books trying to figure out if there was a reason he kept seeing her in his dreams. He practically moved into the library he carved out on his ship next to his chambers.

How long Ben sat there, straining to listen to the whispers in the Force, he couldn’t say. It felt like time was frozen but rushing but falling back in on itself all the same time here. But eventually, the voices faded.

That’s when Ben heard crackling. It was inconsistent, spontaneous – a zap that reverberated in the silence sending shockwaves through the Force itself. It was a tempest of sound and energy that he didn’t realize was building into the crescendo he was hearing now.

Ben scrambled to his feet. Looking up, far _far_ up, he could make out something against the darkness. Teal light came pouring from a jagged hole somewhere above him. Lighting streaked through the clouded haze. As he strained, he could hear the sounds of dying starships – the distinct whistle of burning metal. He could feel the rumble of them – thousands of them – crashing into whatever was above him.

Exegol.

It all came back to Ben in a blur.

How the Emperor suspended him with a vice-like Force grip. He used Ben’s own power and turned it cold against him. And with a simple flick of his wrist, he sent Ben flying through the air, away from Rey. He didn’t stop when his back cracked on a slate of jagged obsidian. No. He kept falling -- face-first into the pit, the blue light blinding him.

Ben would probably never describe his tutelage under Snoke “lucky” but it did at least prepare him for being flung off the sides of cliffs.

So as he plummeted, Ben stretched out his arms sensing the atmosphere around him drag against his body. It slowed him enough that the next ledge he hit he was actually able to hold onto. He hung there, dangling from one hand. Above him, somewhere, Rey was yelling. Below was darkness he couldn’t truly couldn’t comprehend. It pulled at his legs, inviting him to surrender to it.

 _Climb Ben,_ a thousand voices whispered to him. _Now. Be brave Ben._

So he did. And he found Rey. And he saved her. And he kissed her. And he died?

“I know this place,” Ben whispered to himself.

How many Jedi could see what he was seeing right now? Be where he is?

He vaguely remembered hearing the legends from San Lor Tekka over drinks Ben’s mother would not have approved of when he and Luke found the star compasses. He could still see the outline of a faded map in one of the leather bond books Luke tucked away.

Exegol. Ach-To. Places tethered to the Force like an umbilical cord. A nexus. A maelstrom of midichlorians.

A vergence scatter. A bridge to nowhere. And everywhere.

A world between the worlds.

“Kriff…”

Ben was rapidly putting the pieces together. He cursed himself for not figuring it out sooner – preferably before he and Rey made their last stand on a cosmic sinkhole. He must have fallen in after saving Rey – why? That was another question he could figure out later. But if he fell _in_ then he should able to get _out._

But as he looked back up, feeling like he could float out of his body with the sheer excitement of this discovery, his chest sunk. The damage to the planet was too much. An entire fleet of planet-killing ships pierced the crust and dug their way closer to the core. Ben watched it in slow motion. The teal light began to bleed red. The haze of smoke seeped out of the crack he fell through. And as the planet above him combusted, Ben was thrown flat on his back.

“No. No. No. No!” Ben shouted as he scurried back up to his feet.

But as the dust cleared it was obvious. Exegol was gone. Blinked out of the Force like it never existed. And with it, his escape route.

Ben blinked and wished for a moment he could sink into whatever subatomic matter was under him.

He breathed deeply, trying to quell the rapid battering in his chest and the tears that were pricking at his eyes. No. He was _not_ going to lose it here. Now.

He remembered himself at 15, his uncle slumped over his shoulder, bleeding badly from a bantha attack. The panic was blurring the stars above him like it was now. But Luke was there. Luke centered him.

 _Breathe Ben_.

Closing his eyes and finding his center, the Force stopped whipping around him. He breathed and it stilled like a crystal lake. Then, slowly, he probed out with his feelings. They rippled out from him like a stone in the water.

Ben reached back in his own mind, finding the memory of old book, the pages tinged yellow, and a small sketch in the lower right-hand corner. The chain world theory. He remembered the words. He remembered another map. A map to Exegol. To Ach-To. To Lothal. To Malachor. To –

That was it. That was the furthest anyone had ever gotten really. Not even master Luke could get much more out of that old Jedi Ezra.

But Ben could feel it. Now that his mind was open, he could the heat beneath his feet. He could practically see it glow in the force, snaking a path for him to…somewhere. So he followed it as it went on and on and on. He never peeled his eyes away of the light in his mind, not even to take a look around as the entire galaxy unfolded around him. He couldn’t say how long he walked, but when his boots began to pinch at his toes he was relieved to see whatever he was looking for wasn’t much farther.

The next portal he found looked very different than the Sith cavern his life force sank through. It was scarier.

Because that was exactly what he needed right now, Ben thought with a huff.

There was a weak cascade of red water – no _lava,_ Ben realized – separating him from the dark room on the other side. It was cold. A shadow of death hovered like a fog on the other side. The heat rolled off of the opening in slow, languid, searing waves.

Mustafar. Ben could feel the planet’s vibration in the Force. And he remembered it vaguely from what seemed a lifetime ago, when he stormed his grandfather’s castle and stole his wayfinder. On the surface it simmered – the breath of new life seeping into stem of ash and darkness Vader left behind. But here, down deep below, there was no life. And the coldness, echoes of past screams and tears, rattled through the Force, overwhelming and violent.

Aside from the stinging crackles of energy the long-gone Sith infused this place with, Ben knew something was wrong. Unnatural. Unbalanced.

He inched closer to the archway, and he realized why the flow was disrupted. The edges of the portal were uneven, lava oozed from the cracks like the planet itself was bleeding. Without thinking, Ben pressed his hand against the jagged rock, just for the briefest of moments and a wave of heat seared his palm with a sharp hiss.

"What the kriffing ---" Ben cursed, lifting his hand to mouth and trying to soothe his blistering skin with his tongue. 

Then he was hit with the vision.

He was seeing out of two crimson-tinted frames. His chest was encased in heavy metal that forced too much air into his lungs and sucked it back out. The mechanical breathing echoed in his ears.

_Vader was here._

Ben watched through his grandfather’s eyes as he left his man-made body and forced his way through the portal. He saw Anakin’s life – the tragedy of a lonely boy with too much power turning to cocoon himself in jealously and fear and lust for _more_ – past him as he trudged towards the old temple. Ben slaughtered the Jedi of his grandfather’s past with his own hands, one by one, and felt a hatred not his own course through him.

Then he saw the woman. Ben knew her from his dreams at night, but his grandfather knew her in a much different way. He felt his heart constrict his chest, as he reached out with his grandfather’s real hand for his grandmother. But Padmé wouldn’t come. She fell away, far far down from him.

He was trapped in his grandfather’s mind, as it sunk back into his body, but the rage, the pain was all too familiar for Ben. He lifted his grandfather’s nightmare of a lightsaber with ease. Together they slashed at the portal they so violently ripped open, with such force that the walls began to bleed. Vader turned silently on his heel, cape flaring out behind him, as he left the dark room and Ben returned to his own, much quieter mind.

“Grandfather,” Ben blinked, stunned and at a loss for real words.

Whatever his grandfather did, however he opened a hole into the Force itself, Ben had somehow made worse. He started hearing whispers, but not the same as before. These were icy, reptilian voices. And the lava began to turn black, like deadened veins crawling out from inside the rock itself. The heat of Mustafar was gone. Something else was in its place. A chilling emptiness began to slither out, crawling towards Ben.

The portal trembled at his proximity and began to cave in on itself, but Ben only started to run when everything around him began to quake. For the first time, the space beneath him felt unstable and the Force felt like it was tearing itself apart.

He didn’t stop running – even with a searing pain digging its way through his chest – until the quaking settled. 

_What was that...._

But now there was no path. No pull in the Force to guide him.

So, Ben kept walking, meandering slowly in a new direction, hoping that he’d eventually end up somewhere useful.

Then he actually saw her. A hazy vision that glowed up ahead. Ben sprinted over, feeling weightless for the first time when he neared her.

Rey.

Curled in on herself, she was sleeping with her arms wrapped around her staff. Ben recognized the walls of her AT-AT, and the distinct rust-colored sand of Jakku. She looked at younger, her cheeks more hallow then he remembered and her shoulders boney. A light sheen of sweat glistened on her body as she twisted in her sleep.

He didn’t know _when_ she was or if his voice could carry itself across space and time but he couldn’t help himself.

“I’ll come back to you sweetheart,” Ben whispered down to her. Rey smiled in her sleep. “I promise.”

Ben leaned in to brush her sweaty hair off her face, but as soon as he stepped towards her the space around him twisted sharply and he was back in his nowhere world with a strange sweet breeze drifting towards him.

 _“Ben,”_ Rey from somewhere, somewhen, else called out to him. She giggled and it twinkled in the Force around him. _“I think he might have been a bigger nerd than you Rose.”_

He ran his hands threw his hair and sighed deeply. He turned a full circle before admitting the inevitable – he was lost.

 _Kriff it_ , Ben thought, and he took off running.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY. Ben just wants his books back please and thank you Mr. Force. 
> 
> Also -- bonus points to anyone that can figure out where all the voices are from. 
> 
> Next up -- back to Rey and the Resistance as the dust fails to really settle after the Final Battle.


	4. Chapter 4

She was dreaming about Ben Solo. She always dreamed about Ben Solo. Even when he was still encasing himself in the dark robes of Kylo Ren – she dreamed about the Ben Solo that peaked out from behind his wide brown eyes and pouting lips.

Her dreams often replayed the memories she wrapped deep within her mind, preserving them pristinely in the Force.

_He was there with her, just days after she began training with Leia. Both stopped breathing when they saw each other for time since Crait because that was **not** supposed to happen anymore. Rey braced herself for the wrath of Supreme Leader Ren, demanding she give up their location and best him in a final duel. _

_But instead, she found Ben Solo dressed up as a prince staring curiously at her. He took in the semi-circle of books she built around herself and winced at his grandfather’s broken lightsaber that she chucked into the soft ground moments before._

_“Try that one,” he pointed to a book far to her right. “The thirty-first page – should have a bit of a fold in the top left corner. That’s it. And just don’t forget to breathe.”_

_He removed his gloves as he watched her try to fuse the crystal back together. Rey’s back was coated in sweat and the thin vein in her left temple began to throb. His large, and surprisingly soft, hands covered hers. Distracting as the tingles his touch was sending down her spine were, Rey noticed her palms twitching with energy. The light blue stone was pulsating in the Force, overheating in their hands. And when they both pulled away, Anakin’s kyber crystal was restored._

_“Try not to kill me with it,” Kylo told her, as Ben twitched at the corner of his mouth._

Rey, nestled deep in his loose-fitting black sweater, burrowed deeper into her cot.

“Ben.”

The dream shifted and she saw a different version of him.

It was the real Ben that came to her and held her in his arms. All of Kylo’s casing stripped away from him. He wore the same sweater she always wore to sleep nowadays, only missing the small hole she made with his own saber. The bruises and cuts she could still feel on the tips of her fingers were gone.

But he wasn’t on Exegol. No, this Ben was wading through stars and supernovas and entire constellations. Halting for a moment, Ben looked around a little lost. He blew hair out of his face with a little huff and roughly brushed it to the side with his hand. He lifted the bottom of his shirt to wipe his brow, exposing a flash of the chiseled hills and valleys on his abdomen. Unabashed, here in her dream, Rey drank in the sight of him.

But…it felt too real to be a dream. Rey could smell the hint of pine that wormed its way into her memory of him, a soft detail of the Supreme Leader that she wondered if anyone else ever noticed. It was there, on this Ben, who she was now only heartbeats away from.

“I’m trying Rey,” the tenor of his voice danced over her skin like it did all those months ago. “I’m looking for a way out.”

“Ben!” she called to him. “Ben, I’m here. I’m right here.”

But he couldn’t hear her. Her voice, as soon as it left her mouth, was sucked away into the stars. She reached out to touch him, feeling the heat of his body radiating off of him, but she couldn’t make actual contact. Her hand passed right through him. Like she was a ghost.

“No!” her scream was lost. “Ben please!”

 _You could still have him,_ a shiver ran down her spine. _You could find him. Bring him back. The power that runs through you -- you could rip through life and death and bring him back by force._

_Do it._

Rey jolted up. Her chest heaved as her room came into focus in the soft morning light. Ben’s sweater slipped off her shoulder and she shivered in cool air.

A little spark of hope fluttered in her chest for the first time in six months. It was a long shot – that she knew – but Rey also knew she never dreamed of Ben like that before. Was it possible? If he was dead could she bring him back? Should she?

Slowly she climbed out of bed. Her long legs were covered in goosebumps that had nothing to do with the cold stone floor she was walking across. Rey tucked herself into Leia’s old chair – a gift Connix graciously shared with her – and ran her fingers over the old leather books. She hadn’t opened the Jedi texts in ages. Not since they went looking for Exegol.

She always meant to. Especially since Finn and Jannah had shown up the other day with a cargo ship full of orphans they rescued battling First Order loyalists. They brought them to Rey, with their big pleading eyes, assuming she’d know what to do with Force abilities run amuck.

“You need a teacher,” Ben once told her.

He was right even more now. She mastered the ways of the Force, but had no real idea of how to pass that on to anyone. She tried. With Finn, who was patient and eager, but ultimately left to command battle raids. With these younger ones, who looked at her with reverence, and soft “yes master”s she wasn’t quite sure where to begin.

She told herself she was trying to review the basics. Trying to sort through a thousand years of Jedi lore to pinpoint exactly where she should start teaching these kids but her eyes kept skimming for any hints of how she could bring back – _resurrect_ – Ben.

 _It’s not a story the Jedi would tell you_ , another shiver coursed through Rey.

Rey shook her head. But what if he’s at peace? What if he’s not? If only the damn Jedi ghosts would actually deign to answer her every once in a while. But they, like Ben, were gone. Blinked out of the Force like she only just imagined them.

She thumbed through another page and paused. Rey had never really noticed before, but there were a few scribbles in the margins where the ink seemed darker, less worn than the rest. Gently, she traced the curved letters with her fingers. A vision of Ben – young enough that his ears still stuck out from underneath his mop of hair, curled up on his cot, writing furiously – floated in her mind.

Rey smiled softly and tried to decipher Ben’s handwriting: something about a vergence scatter, how planes of time could overlap on existing points of space, force nexuses.

She leaned back with a sigh. Leia was no Jedi, but she spent enough time around Luke to help parse out what some of the more cosmic concepts Rey’s practical education on Jakku never really had much need for. Clearly her son had the same penchant for grand thoughts and big words – Rey snorted at the thought.

But Ben’s notes kept circling in her mind – and then it dawned on her. The map to Exegol.

Rey snatched another book from the pile and haphazardly tore through the thousand-year-old pages until she found what she was looking for. The page detailing everything the Jedi knew about the Sith’s hidden planet. She continued to scan through it, zeroing in on another map in the corner. With a small gasp, she recognized a name: Ahch-To. A bit overwhelmed, her hands shaking slightly, she laid the two texts next to each other. They matched.

 _What does this mean Ben?_ Rey tried desperately to force down their long quiet bond. _Where are you?_

A rustle outside her bunker made her jump out of her reverie.

“Rey,” Finn said, stepping lightly into the room and flipping on the overhead light. “Oh—I’m sorry I didn’t mean to interrupt your meditation. Any luck getting a hold of, ahem, the Force ghosts you were looking for?”

“No. I wasn’t looking for _them_ ,” her voice was quiet but pointed.

Since her meltdown with Rose four months ago brought the Ben Solo of everything out into the open, things between her and Finn always seemed to have an edge to it.

Poe would tell her stories of the young Ben he remembered, the one who wanted to be a pilot like Han. Connix and Rose began a weekly tradition of holing up in one of their bunkers with a bottle of Corellian wine to commiserate, which Rey suspected was mostly just cover for her to talk about the Ben _she_ got to know. But since their shouting match, Finn never spoke a word – good or bad – about Ben.

She watched as Finn eyed the sweater that hung loosely around her frame and sighed.

“Well,” Finn cleared his throat. “We’re starting down in the command center if you’re ready.”

Rey padded over to her small wardrobe after he left, bypassing her old white wraps and reaching instinctively to the bundle of grey material in the corner. The soft grey leggings she wiggled into had become like a second skin at this point, setting snugly on her hips without digging in. She swapped Ben’s sweater for another black shirt she found on the Falcon and managed to shrink down to her size. As she trudged out the door, Rey tugged on her forest green vest that was repurposed – a hidden talent of Chewie’s – from one of Lando’s old capes and flipped her loose hair over her hood.

Luke and Leia’s lightsabers bounced against both of her thighs as Rey jogged down the hill towards the command center, her knee-high boots thankfully keeping most of the mud from splashing down to her toes. She knew she was late – already the raised voices of their ragtag group of officials were spilling out into the jungle – and Rey braced herself for the politics.

The command center remained untouched since the Final Order fell. It remained an active buzz in the largest cavern here on Ajan Kloss, carved out against the cliffside and shaded by the large leafy trees that stretched out above them. The holoware was kept up to date and the comms encryption continuously rotated. The constant monitoring and non-surprising blast of alarms felt just the same as it did a year ago before they even learned Palpatine was back.

Rey slid in between Rose and Connix as Finn slammed his hand down on the head of the table. He shared the place of honor alongside Poe – the two generals of the Resistance now looking to lead them into whatever was supposed to come next.

“Three of our biggest cruisers just took on heavy damage because of the loyalists,” Finn punctuated every word. “If we don’t strike back now, what was it all for? What was the point of resisting if we were just going to hand it all right back?"

There weren’t that many with them at the table, just the remaining handful of commanders and officers Poe and Finn felt close to -- Aftab Ackbar, old-timer Cypress, Larma D’Acy, Beaumount Kin, and Jannah -- but half of them grumbled their support for Finn’s point.

Poe sighed heavily, “The point is that we just finished a war – tried to at least – and I don’t really think it’s a great idea to kick start a second one that my grandparents already fought decades ago unless we _absolutely_ half to.”

“Poe. Buddy. That’s already happening,” Finn pushed back. “Half of the core worlds are already forming a confederation of loyalists and it won’t be long before they try to start expanding that. If we don’t fight back now the Republic is over before it even gets back on its legs.”

A memory flooded back to Rey. Ben – when he was still somewhere between himself and Kylo Ren – stood amongst the embers of the Snoke’s throne room. Even with his ragged breathing, Rey could see his shoulders relax just the slightest bit as he took in the wreckage of his former master’s body.

_“It’s time to let old things die.”_

Rey found herself raising her voice – for the first time at one of these sessions – cutting off her friends before it came to their typical shouting match.

“Why are fighting so hard to restore a system that never worked in the first place?”

The command center fell silent and Rey felt all nine sets of eyes on her.

“Look, the Republic wasn’t perfect,” D’Arcy started. “Neither was the Republic before that. But it was the best choice. Leia believed in it.”

“Maybe that’s the case. But it didn’t work for everyone,” this time it was Connix that jumped in. “And that’s coming from someone whose parents or grandparents never served in politics.”

The cross-talk swelled up immediately and was getting incrementally louder by the second.

“Everybody quiet!” Rose shouted. “Look, none of us can say the Republic is perfect – but we can’t just abandon it either. But either way it doesn't really matter does it?The ten of us aren’t going to be able to craft a government for the entire galaxy from this jungle!”

She took a deep breath before continuing.

“I propose a small handful of us go and meet with the loyalists on neutral ground. See if there’s any common ground we might be able to start with – or at the very least call a cease-fire for a bit.”

“A diplomatic mission,” Connix nodded along.

The table was quiet for a beat. Poe scratched that the full-on beard he’d grown in the past few months – mulling over the concept. Finn, on the other hand, looked at him in disbelief.

“You can’t actually be considering this Poe,” he said. “As co-general I know I won’t be signing off on this.” He turned to Rose. “These people are not trustworthy Rose. They dedicated their lives to the First Order and can’t even give it up even when they’ve lost. They’re sick. They want control. I should know I—”

“Yeah you should know! You should know better than this Finn,” Jannah was standing at this point. “I get it. You and I saw the light. We got out. But I remember the friends I had in other units. I remember believing for the longest time that we were fighting for order and stability. Some people still see that, Finn. It’s all they’ve ever known. It’s what they were willing to fight for.”

Finn and Poe exchanged a silent look, the latter wiggling his eyebrows after a couple beats.

“Fine,” Finn sighed. “You made your point. But I’ll tell you what we’re not going to do -- we’re not going in unprepared. I want a ship with primed with the new gunners.”

“You and I both know we’re going to be begging Rey to take the Falcon,” Poe interjected.

Finn didn’t skip a beat, “Okay so we’ll beg to take the Falcon. But we’re all going with the _new_ blasters. And an escort team will remain in orbit.”

“Great!” Rose leaned back in her chair and made direct eye contact with Finn. “Cause we already set up a meeting on Coruscant.”

Rey slipped out before she had to hear anymore bickering about diplomatic logistics and who was going and what guns were too aggressive to bring along. She knew the outcome already – Finn would bluster, Poe would mediate, Connix would silently judge and Rose would ultimately get the deal settled. And Chewie would be finishing up on the last minute Falcon upgrades she and Rose designed a couple of weeks ago.

Rey, on the other hand, headed straight for the jungle where ten kids were waiting for her to open their minds to the ways of the Force. Or something like that.

She led them over to a quiet clearing amongst the knotted tree roots, shaded by the tangle of vines and branches above them. After a bit more herding than she anticipated, they all settled in a circle with still hands folded in their laps. Rey breathed deeply and let the words Luke spoke to her so long ago on the slab of rock on Ach-To wash over her.

“Reach out,” she said. “With your feelings. See the blades of grass under you, the moss growing in the trees.”

One by one she saw each of her students brighten in the Force, their energies pooling around them and spilling across the jungle floor and seeping into the spongey soil.

“I see a river!”

“I can see the base!”

“Ew! That can-cell just got eaten by a droch!”

Rey smiled as she watched her students visibly relax and wonder at the world stretching out around them, feeling connected _truly_ connected to the invisible thread winding around them all.

But then something happened.

She felt it – a rumble deep within the Force itself. It sent rolling waves of nausea through her. And she wasn’t alone. One by one her students dropped out of their meditation – some holding their stomachs, other their heads. One said she heard a ripping sound all around her. Rey held the girl close to her chest. She knew there was powerful light and powerful darkness but this felt _deeper_.

“Master,” one boy -- Temiri Blagg, the one Rose found on Canto Bight -- piped up after the quakes subsided. He was staring off into the distant skyline, not at Rey. His voice was light with curiosity that Rey could not return. “If the Force is made of living beings and living beings die, can the Force die too?”

“The Force _connects_ all living things,” Rey started, but realized that didn’t really answer the question.

 _I have no idea,_ Rey admitted to herself.

_But you know where you can find answers. To everything you need to know. To everything you want to know._

Rey rustled all the kids back to base, leaving Klaud in charge of feeding them for the time being. Haphazardly throwing clothes and her Jedi texts in her satchel, she dashed down to the landing field.

Rose raised an eyebrow when Rey arrived, panting, and throwing her bag up the Falcon’s ramp.

“Couldn’t stand the thought of Poe lightspeed-skipping in this thing that badly?” she chuckled. “You know I wouldn’t let that happen again right?”

Rey shook her head, “Not that – though I am flying this thing. I just…I realized I needed to be here, going with you guys.”

“A Force thing?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

Rose just nodded and pulled Rey gently by the arm, “Okay. You can try and walk me through it on the way there.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have lots of thoughts and feelings about where all the characters are right now so please if you do too leave a comment or hit me up on tumblr (fangirl_outlet_very_much_needed). 
> 
> But in all: 1. We all need a Rose in our lives. 2. Rey needed an outfit change.
> 
> Also this chapter gets a little heavy into the WBW theory. If you're not familiar here are three tumblr threads from my tumblr that I'm basing this story off of. 
> 
> [thread one](https://fangirl-outlet-very-much-needed.tumblr.com/post/189906591001/reylospacebear-youunderestimatebensolo-so)
> 
> [thread two](https://fangirl-outlet-very-much-needed.tumblr.com/post/189906591001/reylospacebear-youunderestimatebensolo-so)
> 
> [thread three](https://fangirl-outlet-very-much-needed.tumblr.com/post/189862638246)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IM SORRY. 
> 
> It's been forever since I updated this. I completely reworked how I wanted to approach this and after weeks of researching WBW theories I wanted to tinker with this is chapter especially. 
> 
> MAJOR shoutout to Rebecca (@/drunk0nsunlight on twitter) for going down the WBW conspiracy rabbit hole with me and doing a bunch of research that is bolstering the theory. 
> 
> Things at work have finally calmed down a bit, she says hopefully, so I'm aiming to update this again before the end of February. 
> 
> ALSO: I got really excited about this new direction and all the WBW stuff that I made a new mood board

Blaster fire was not what Ben expected to hear when he found himself in a small chamber, admiring the carved calligraphy adorning the slate grey walls that in a language he had never seen before. 

But it was unmistakable – their muted shrills, shouts echoing from a few stories above, and the cracked stone walls rumbling slightly.

_A gunfight?_ he thought with a huff. _Perfect._

Falling through the portal -- consciously this time -- left Ben’s stomach still reeling. It was probably rash, in hindsight. But when he found the first opening that actually gave way to his presence rather than collapsing in on itself at his touch, there was no hesitating. He practically dove headfirst as reality itself twisted around him and plopped him unceremoniously in this dimly lit room. 

But now that he was out of there – Ben didn’t care who he had to rob or how he had to hobble back to the Resistance – he’d find Rey. Somehow. 

So while Ben was not enthused about somehow landing in the middle of yet another shootout between whatever factions of his First Order survived the decimation on Exegol and likely his mother’s most dedicated troops – battles meant soldiers. Soldiers needed transports. And transports could get him to wherever Rey was. 

With a new surge of energy, he grabbed one of the wooden handtorches lining the walls and bounded down a hallway to his right. 

He didn’t get far before sliding unceremoniously to a stop right in front of a looming archway filled with stone. His eyebrows furrowed as he pondered the apparent dead end. The peak of the arch reached far above his head, disappearing into the shadows beyond the firelight. Stone bricks, marred by deep gashes crudely carved ages ago, were intricately woven together without leaving a single seam. 

Unlike everything else he had seen in wherever he had found himself – worn and slightly crumbling with the battle -- the barrier in front of him was solid, unwavering. The force cascaded off it in a torrent. The current was chilled and numbing, unlike the tepid ripples he waded through in the vergence plane. 

Ben slowly raised his hand, palm outstretched, and evened out his breathing. The force materialized in his mind, curling against the bricks and carving out space between them. But nothing moved. 

_Really?_

He huffed and screwed his eyes shut. He tried, really he did, to stay calm and focused but as the moments turned to minutes his thoughts turned to Rey. Rey and her three buns and her sunlight smile that he’d really like to speed along back to if the _zotting_ Force would kindly just _work with him._

And as a familiar sticky heat crawled up the back of his neck and stiffness crept into his muscles, the stones began to slowly, _infuriatingly slowly_ , curl in on themselves until the archway was clear. 

Ben shuddered, choosing not to focus on how easy it still was for him to drum up those stormy feelings. Instead, he instinctively reached down to his right hip, feeling for his saber and finding only empty space. 

_Stop. Think, Solo. You don’t know where you are or who is outside. You don’t even have your blaster. Be smarter._

Ben eyed a rumpled pile of dark cloth by the corner of the arch. Snatching it, he noticed how finely woven the zeyd-cloth was, a level of detail he’d never seen a droid-made garment actually obtain, as he pulled it over his head. The robe, all black except for the dark magenta runics that lined down the front, clung slightly to his chest but was still long enough to actually cover his feet. Though, the high collar was stiffer than what he wore with his knights. 

“Is this really Kittât?” he delicately traced the ancient language. _So kriffing cool._ “Who still writes in Kittât?”

A swell of blaster fire snapped him out of his reverie and he yanked his hood low over his eyes.

Ben followed the next hallway as he gingerly padded through the archway, willing it to _stay put_ until he returned. 

It made a sharp right not far from where he emerged, depositing him immediately at the base of a staircase. Unlike the chamber he fell into, the hall’s handtorches were completely unlit and the first one Ben tried to fiddle with came apart in his hands. Bracing his right hand against the wall, he slowly stumbled up what was apparently a tightly coiled staircase for three, seven, twelve flights. 

Ben winced when he finally emerged into the sunlight. Cupping his hand over his eyes, he could make out what kind of planet he found himself on. 

Lush rolling hills. Tall frawny trees sprouting up in every direction. Sand. And a crystal blue sea stretching out beyond that. 

_I don’t like humidity._ Ben could already feel his mop of hair beading with sweat. _It’s wet and it's gross and it’s just everywhere._

But such a beachy planet? It crossed Naboo off the list – it wasn’t this Force-forsaken _humid_ there. But the only other ones Ben could think off didn’t fit the list either. Sesid? Wrong color sand. Kashyyk? Wrong trees. Spira? Not enough tourists. 

He couldn’t place any such First Order outpost under his time in command, but he wouldn’t put it past Hux to be ordering out troops behind his back. 

Picking his way past large ornate statues – _definitely a temple_ –presumably of jedis he’d honestly be fascinated to try and recognize, Ben navigated his way down the winding curve of the wall towards what looked like an old landing platform. Everything around him was made of the same slate grey rock he first saw here, weathered away from eons of elemental exposure. 

It would have been the place Luke would take him in his early teenage years. His uncle would have asked his thoughts on the symbols etched into virtually every column he passed. He would have taught him to feel the force still vibrating in the walls. 

But Ben didn’t really have time for any of that because he found what he was looking for – a decameter away sat, _completely unguarded_ , a ship. And a fast one by the looks of it. 

The freighter was larger than his father’s ship but the curved hull was similar. Rather than a disk though, this ship was more U-shaped with three prongs protruding at the starboard end. He circled around, and it looked like it was freshly repaired. The old stabilizers were still smoking off to the side. In the old, chipping orange and white paint two words were etched onto the dorsal side, in old Aurebesh: 

**Ebon Hawk.**

Ben snorted. Someone really thought it was a good idea to name their glorified showboat after one of the most legendary smuggler ships from the Jedi Civil Wars? 

_And here I thought a crossguard saber made me pretentious._

The landing gear was left open for the taking and Ben was about to duck inside when he felt an odd shiver in the Force. It made his ears pop as all the sound around him drained away and he could only hear the sizzle of lightsabers clashing. 

_Okay, now that can’t be possible._

As Supreme Leader, Ben spent the better part of a year investigating all sorts of spikes in the Force. He’d know if there was a sudden resurgence in laser swords popping up in pretty much _any_ part of the galaxy. Kyber crystals were a tightly controlled substance -- Snoke made sure of that. 

Ben’s feet carried him of their own accord towards an offshoot of the landing platform. He hid behind one of the large stone columns and watched as a _three-way duel_ unfolded. 

The fight was two against one -- but that didn’t seem to tip the scales much. 

A woman, dressed in a dark tunic that hung in panels past her black boots, held one foe -- a feline-looking woman desperately swinging her blue saber through nothing -- suspended in the air by the throat with one hand. Her other gracefully twirled a double-edged saberstaff through the air at the opponent to her right -- a man nearly twice her size, dark features and sharp edges of his face that _should_ be terrifying twisted into a mask of something else. 

Their blades -- crimson against violet -- clashed against each other. She leaned into the blow, throwing her entire weight against it. He braced himself like a tightly coiled spring, rolling back on his heels to absorb it all. 

“Please, Bastila,” the man urged. His dark brown locks slipped into his eyes as he struggled to hold steady against her blade. “You’re better than this. Come back to the light. Come back to me.”

Ben recognized the robes the man and his now-unconscious comrade were wearing -- the tight blended beige shirts tucked into matching trousers tightly secured with a standard utility belt were hints enough. But the tanned leather chest plates were the giveaway, very old armor for jedi knights that fought a very long time ago. 

_Reenactors still exist? And where did they find such accurate costumes?_

“The Jedi council are foolish and selfish. They’re more twisted and corrupt than the Sith could ever be. The Sith are freedom. They allow the Force to flow through us unfiltered, uninhibited. Unlike the Jedi -- they’re only using our abilities to secure their own rule. You must understand that,” Bastila growled back, a sharp edge mixing into the soft lilt of her voice. 

It was that _voice_ that shook Ben to his core. That voice and the dark hair and the big brown eyes and the defiant swing of her staff, so much like…

“You know I’m telling you the truth. The Jedi are holding you back from everything you want. From me,” she pressed on. “Don’t be a fool Revan. You were stronger in the dark.”

Then it hit him all at once. The sheer impossibility of it sent him reeling backward. Revan. Darth Revan. Legendary Revan. Knight of the Old Republic. 

There was no way that ship on the platform would get him to Rey. No matter where in the galaxy he was -- Not unless he had a way to wait around for about four thousand years without turning into a dry husk. 

With the blood pounding in his ears, Ben fled, tearing the sith emblems from his chest. 

*********

When he woke up, again flat on his back, all he saw was black. Black and a sea of stars.

He sighed, mostly not out of exasperation. At least the Force was kind enough to drop him back off under the right cluster of stars and the same canvas of nothingness he started that wild journey out in. 

But...something was different. It happened so slowly Ben wasn’t sure if he could trust his eyes, but he was sure of it -- there were more constellations, brighter planets glistening out in the distance before. He watched as they sporadically dimmed, dotted out like it was never really there. 

Ben was so caught up in the show of fading stars that he didn’t notice the Force stirring around him. It swelled around in like an incoming tide. It intensified into a squall, whipping around him, wrapping around his arms and legs and torso. 

But Ben felt none of it. He just kept staring up at the inky darkness that was sweeping any glimmers of the light. He didn’t even notice when it pulled him down and fully submerged him in its depths. 

***** 

“The Force is the light. The light reveals. The dark exists. The dark conceals.” 

Ben blinked. Maybe he was dead after all. Maybe this was the afterlife. 

He was in a grand golden room with lofty pillars stretching high above to the curved ceiling. The chamber itself was a perfect circle, expanding from an icon of a sun in the center of the polished floor. A Uneti tree, barely out of its infancy, stretched upwards against the back wall -- where a set of wings and single star, the Jedi symbol, gleamed in golden paint against the marble. 

And in the center of it all: Rey. 

She was there -- right there -- in front of him. Her long legs were folded as she hovered with ease high above the ground. Her eyes were closed, brow furrowed, lips breathing her mantra as she remained deep in meditation. 

He wondered if she could sense him. If she could feel the weak thread of their bond tethering him to this place, rooting him even as the Force coursed around him. Ben watched from behind a golden column, pressed into the shadows, entranced. 

“The Force is the light. The light reveals. The dark exists. The dark conceals.” 

She was not the same Rey he held in the cavern on Exegol. She wasn’t the young teen he comforted in a cramped AT-AT buried on Jakku. She wasn’t any Rey he had seen before. 

This Rey still wrapped her hair in three buns, but the long dark locks had long faded to grey. Her freckled skin was paler now, marked by large age spots and deep set wrinkles. The stainless white robes that billowed out around her swallowed up much of her small frame, but the tiny wrap at her waist, the hint of fragile wrists, and gaunt skin around her clavicle made her state all too clear. 

Ben hesitantly took a step forward when the doors to the chamber burst open.

In rushed Poe Dameron -- haphazard as Ben had ever seen him. His hair was tousled, far more grey than black at this point, and he had grown out a full-on beard. But old age hadn’t shriveled the pilot down at all. 

“Rey,” he huffed. Then louder, “REY! If you could, like, pause your communication with the great mystical ---”

“Poe,” Rey’s voice was gravelly and low. “There is no passion. There is serenity. _Calm yourself._ ”

Poe shuddered and gritted his teeth as Rey outstretched her hand towards him. 

“Sorry Rey. I know you don’t appreciate raised voices,” Poe’s voice lacked the edge of desperation it did earlier and his eyes were slightly glazed. “It’s just, the negotiations are breaking down. Rose is trying as best she can for them to see reason, but the rest of the high council is set on putting this into law.”

“I am aware of this proposal.”

“And?” Poe’s shoulders began to slump. “They want to implement maximum performance standards on every element of life. No geniuses. No star pilots. No excelling. No exceptions. That isn’t the peace we fought for Rey -- it will be the beginning of the end.” 

“Where do you think they got the idea?” Rey finally turned her attention to Poe as she touched down to the ground. “I happen to agree with the Chancellor, Poe. It’s something I’ve been implementing with my students for years. Powerful Force users have been at the center of virtually every mass catastrophe in the galaxy’s history. Such disparities foster jealously, jealously fosters anger, anger--”

“Anger fosters hatred and all that leads to some great darkness. I get it, oh, Grand Master Jedi,” he sighed deeply. “You were our last hope, Rey.” 

Ben finally wrenched himself from his spot as Poe left the room. He skidded to a stop in front of Rey, praying he was a solid to her as she was to him. 

“Rey, what is happening? What happened to you?” he breathed, chest aching from her sheer proximity. 

The bond flared to life in that moment -- all the distance and the years and the questions between them melted away leaving nothing but the thread between them humming at a frequency only they could hear. 

“This isn’t happening,” With her wide eyes and small voice, Rey almost sounded like the scavenger that shoved into his mind on Starkiller Base. “You're not actually here. You died. The Force willed you to die." 

“No Rey. I’m here. I came back for you.”

“So many years...I looked for you." Rey tentatively reached out a wrinkled, quaking hand -- but snapped it right back with a shake of her head.

"I will not be tempted to live in the dark again. I can't.” Ben recognized the way she jutted out her chin. “Love leads to fear. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to the darkness.” 

Rey backed away, shutting him out as she closed her eyes and lifted herself back into the air.

Ben tried to chase after her, convince her she was wrong, but his feet caught no traction. The golden room was receding into the darkness as the Force swept him away and their bond dimmed. 

The last thing Ben heard was Rey’s litany.

“Love leads to fear. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to the darkness.”

*********

Ben sputtered out a clump of sand and was pretty sure he somehow went blind. Instead of all chilled darkness, now all he could make out was searing bright light. Everywhere.

“Luke!” A man’s gruff voice called out. “Luke I swear. I told you three times today _not_ to take the cruiser out until after your chores are done. If the moisture modules aren’t properly wiped down before we start the whole intake could be tainted.”

Ben felt his jaw drop. He wasn’t blind. He was on kriffing Tatooine. And his _teenaged_ uncle was proof. 

Luke groaned and kicked at the ground. 

“Uncle Owen, I’ve been saying that I needed to pick up these power couplings for months now. Half the cycle is already gone!” 

Owen -- great-uncle Owen -- said nothing, but tossed his rag over at his nephew and walked inside the homestead. 

Throwing the rag right back on the ground, Luke pulled at his hair. He paced back and forth, muttering to himself _it’s not fair_ , _holding me back, I hate this place_ \-- kicking up a dust storm and stirring waves in the Force he didn’t even know existed yet until one of the moisture modules skyrocketed into the sky. 

Luke whined and dragged himself over, rag in hand. 

Ben blinked and Tatooine melted away -- morphing into a stately receiving hall. The soft natural hues of the marble arches and pillars and statues and stairwells gleamed in the natural light that came streaming through the large bay windows. A nearby open balcony offered a view of pristine snow-capped mountains. 

_Alderaan_. 

Ben took his time here, losing himself amongst the maze of hallways. His fingers reached to touch everything -- the curtains, the marble walls, his grandmother Breha’s portrait -- hoping that skimming the surface would forever seal his memory. 

Then he spotted his mother. She was young, maybe 18. A circular braided ring at the crown on her head. Her actual crown hung down in her left hand. A large table stacked with parchment and holorecords and datapads stretched out behind her. She, however, was staring at a holovid of destruction somewhere in the galaxy with tears streaming down her face. 

“I swear,” her voice low. “This will be the last they take from me. Take from us. Take from the galaxy.” 

“Alderaan will lead the way. We will destroy the Emperor. Rebellion will burn it to the ground.” 

Ben smiled softly. He wondered what else the Force could show him. He wondered if it could carry him to the exact moment where everything went wrong. If he could step into his younger, stupider self and erase everything. 

A shiver passed through him as the Force around him tinged with cold, running like ice through his veins. But he was entranced by the new scene before him, his fifth birthday party -- his mother’s laughter, his father’s smirk, his uncle’s antics in the corner. 

_You could do it. Time, the Force, it’s yours. You deserve a second chance. You all deserve a chance together._

Ben blinked, his head foggy. 

_Your family Ben. The Force owes you this._

Reality twisted before him. He was standing amongst the flames of the Jedi temple. Above him, a small craft flew overhead and he knew his choices were about to become _extremely_ more limited. 

_Run. Run to your Uncle. Undo it all Ben. Undo everything._

Ben took one small step forward, lighter than he remembered feeling at any point in his entire 23 years. He knew, deep down his uncle could explain. Things would be fine. This was his chance. That’s why he was here. To save his family. To change his destiny -- even if he had to rewrite time to do it. 

The closer he got to his decimated hut, the louder the roaring in his ears became, drowning out the roar of the inferno behind him. 

But then he felt it -- a tiny pull in the Force, as if a tiny thread had wound itself around his chest. It barely resisted, fragile thing that it was, but the zing of electricity it sent through him felt familiar. 

_Your uncle Ben. Your family. Don’t turn your back on them again. Change it. Do it. Ben!_

He ran in the opposite direction, wherever this thread would pull him, tripping over the knotted grass and falling, face first. Instinctively, Ben threw his arms out to brace himself against the hard ground only to find himself submerged underwater. 

Ben came out coughing and threw himself onto the shore, wildly shaking the water out of his hair. There was little else besides the small pond, deep within this dark cavern. He eyed the ragged stone floor, shuddering as he remembered a very similar setting where he _died._

To his left was a large glass wall that spanned the entire entrance. To his right, the water lapped against nothing, and the stars stretched out beyond it. The calm ripples of the Force that flowed over the water were familiar to him now. 

Ben wasn’t alone. There was breathing on the other side of the glass. 

“Let me see them. My parents.”


	6. Chapter 6

“I won’t lose you the way I lost my mother.” 

Rey winced as heat enveloped her. She was trapped on a thin stretch of durasteel, surrounded by a sea of molten lava. It bubbled and boiled around her as a dark factory stretched out above it. 

But she wasn’t alone. 

Down at the other end of the platform, by a glistening silver ship were two figures arguing. The man, tall and broad with a mop of sandy blonde hair, held the woman he was with tightly by the shoulders. Wisps of her dark hair, escaped from the elaborate braid trailing down her back, whipped around in the searing wind as she tilted her face up, dark features painted in anguish. She lifted her hands from her swollen belly to his face, rubbing it softly. 

“Come away with me. Help me raise our child on Naboo. Leave all this behind while we still can,” her voice, wracked and desperate, carried over to Rey as if she was right beside them.

Rey was frozen as the rest of the scene unfolded like a high-velocity speeder crash -- instantaneous, chaotic and deadly. The woman backed away. Another man appeared. The first man rounded on his wife, reaching out with the Force, twisting its dark and chaotic energy around her neck, up, up, off the ground. 

“No!” Rey shouted. “Stop!” 

She took a step forward and the world turned on its axis.

Rey’s face slammed against a cool permaglass floor. Stars swam before her eyes from the force of the impact., as she gingerly lifted herself up. She was in a pristine hallway, not unlike the ones she used to scavenge for imperial parts in its design, but brightly lit and new. And fully operational. 

Rey scrambled to her feet and huddled in a darkened indentation in the wall as a nearby set of doors opened with a soft hiss. Out stepped an imposing imperial officer, his crisp white uniform stark against the dark blue hue of his skin. 

“See to it that those files are stored in the Emperor’s private archive. Delete all other copies immediately.” He didn’t look behind whichever underling his order was directed towards. “And then seal this chamber. No one will have access to it except me and the Emperor himself. Understood?”

“Yes, admiral,” a low voice, pinched with the slightest hint of irritation, said. 

The officer raised two glowing pyramids up for closer inspection, his face contorting into a satisfied grin as their red light cast a sinister shadow on his face. 

“Wayfinders,” Rey whispered. 

The admirals head shot in her direction, narrowed red eyes locking on her own. 

Rey, shuffling backwards, tripped over her own feet and fell into a pile of snow. Icy wind whipped around her, stinging her skin. Everywhere she looked was white, blinding snow coming down in sheets. 

But the blizzard was nothing compared to the squall of the Force swirling around her. The natural and cosmic winds pushed against her, herding her towards a grotto. 

Stepping into the shaded enclave, the first thing Rey registered wasn’t the lack of cold but massive structure stretching up above her. It looked like it was one massive kyber crystal, raw and unpolished, glowing with a soft green hue. Behind it loomed two massive hooded statues. 

The whispers swirled around her, but they were impossible to discern. Rey stepped forward, pressing her hand lightly against the massive stalagmite and everything stilled -- the voices, the wind outside, the Force itself. 

“I’ll come back to you sweetheart.” 

Rey whipped around, but she was no longer in the grotto. 

No, she was in a place far more familiar. A dark musty cave. A pool of water lapping against the rock. A mirror filled with empty promises. 

She had lost count of how many times her dreams had brought her here in the past few months. The Force had fated her to relive this moment, watching herself from a former life. Rey sighed as she watched the dream version of her walk slowly towards the smooth glass, a countless number of their doubles stretching outwards, as two dark figures merged into one and walked her way. 

“Let me see them, my parents,” both Rey's said unison. 

Rey felt the gravel dig into her knees even before her double fell to the ground, knowing she’d see nothing but her own crumpled reflection staring back at her. 

But that’s not what Rey saw. Not this time. 

Instead, when the mist in the mirror faded away, it was Ben Solo that appeared in the glass. The same Ben solo with wild hair, a rumpled sweater that died in her arms, that haunted her dreams in a sea of stars. 

He cradled his right hand against his chest, having snatched it away from the glass just before her double touched him. Ben slumped to the ground, across from dream Rey, taking care to stay away from physically brushing up against the glass, even as she could make out the strained tendons in his shoulders that pulled him closer. 

“Rey,” his deep, gravelly voice was echoey and distorted as if coming through the water. “Rey, I’m so sorry. I-- I can’t. If I leave this place, if I scoop you up in my arms right now, your world will unravel. I -- I can’t help you from here.” 

His head hung low as dream Rey, still only seeing her own reflection, picked herself up and climbed up and out of the cave towards her hut and...Ben. In a former life. 

“I’ll come back to you sweetheart, I promise.” 

Rey’s feet carried her of their own accord. Drawn towards Ben Solo as if he was the only source of gravity in her entire universe. The glass shimmered around her as she passed through, like a ghost. It was her dream, dammit, and if it gave her a chance with Ben, she’d take it consciously or not. 

He blinked once, twice, as she kneeled before him -- the Force already starting to rumble around them like the beginning of an avalanche. 

“How-- what -- Rey,” Ben started, but Rey pressed her lips against his. 

Any and all thoughts beyond the heat of his mouth, slanted and insistent against hers, the softness of his hair, and the groans escaping from deep in his chest washed away around them. He was solid against her as the kiss deepened, their tounges dancing, and Rey slipped one hand down the loose neck of his sweater. She rolled once, twice against him as his hands gripped her hips, digging in nearly to the point of pain. 

“You found me,” he breathed against her lips. “I lo--”

Rey opened her eyes with a gasp as she fell onto the soft plush carpet of her apartment, legs tangled as she tumbled out of her mediation pose. The Skywalker saber, as she had started to more recently think of it, flew out of her hand and rolled across the floor. 

She hadn’t experienced any dream or vision or whatever the Force that was since...well since she found that saber in a box in a castle. 

“Some dream….” Rey shivered as she traced her lip, the tingle of the kiss still lingering. 

Daylight streamed through the soft curtains she had drawn over the massive floor to ceiling windows, but they did nothing to din the cacophony of city sounds that made Coruscant function. Rey focused on her breathing, slowly in and out, and reached out with her mind searching for any spark of green amongst the cityscape to center herself. 

Her eyes fell on the imperial palace -- stark and imposing against the rigid skyline -- thinking of the bones of the Jedi temple buried somewhere down below. Gently she pressed her palm to the window pane. 

_Be with me Ben._

Ben promised he’d always be with her. It was the last thing he ever told her -- she _knew_ she wasn’t imagining his voice clear in the Force after he faded away her arms. 

But it had been nearly a year since Exegol and the most she had felt of him was in these sporadic lucid dreams. He wasn’t anywhere in the Force that she could sense. No one was. The Force felt smaller than it did before, calmer, quieter. But maybe that’s what it was like when there was no great darkness throwing things out of whack. But still, Rey couldn’t help but feel like there was something...more

She knew the answers to everything she was asking were waiting for her just a ten-minute speeder ride away. In the palace, in the catacombs the Emperor had left behind. She felt it the first time she picked her way through the ruins, but ---A shiver ran through her. Turning her back on the view, Rey put the thought of revisiting the temple out of her mind. 

As she did every day for the last eight months, Rey crossed the room, ignoring the sheer grandness that surrounded her. She rumpled the soft downy blankets on her perfectly made bed, having learned a long time ago it was the best way to avoid any worried glances when Rose inevitably made her way to coax Rey down to breakfast. 

She walked into the wardrobe attached to her apartment, and considered her options. Whoever this _Amidala_ was that owned this apartment in the days of the Republic preferred ornate fashion -- long flowing skirts, velvet coats, delicate sleeves that reached to the floor -- but Rey just saw the vast amount of material she could repurpose. 

She reached for a dark velvety navy jacket, fashioned from a floor length coat. It was the first project she’d thrown herself into in the early days of moving to Coruscant, tired of tripping over the hemlines of the dresses Poe insisted she wear to the negotiations with the First Order Loyalists. She had to cut off about four feet of the garment, so it cut just past her waist, but it was soft and breathable in the chilled recycled air of old Senate chambers. Rey slipped on a pair of loose, flowing sky blue trousers that hung snug around her hips. 

There was a full length mirror in this wardrobe, fitted with an automatic lamination feature. But unlike the previous occupant of this apartment, Rey’s clothes were not a message for a political arena. She had no one to influence but the handful of kids three floors below who were waiting for her. So, like everyday, Rey walked out to meet Rose at her door without a second look at her reflection. 

***** 

Jannah found Rey where she always did -- standing at the back of a converted training room as a gaggle of children spread out across the room whacking each other with sticks. 

“Go on,” she urged the two little ones clinging to her pant legs. “I promise none of them bite.” 

Jannah trailed after the two young twi’leks she found abandoned in an old mining colony as they scampered through the doorway. A dozen pairs of eyes fell on them and a sudden hush fell across the room at the interruption. But Rey just smiled and walked over, kneeling down to talk to her two new arrivals at eye level. 

“You must be Mobak and Brecca,” she said. “Jannah’s told me you two have been very brave traveling all this way to us. We’re very excited to have you.”

“Thank you,” Brecca squeaked. 

“I know it must be a lot right now. New place, lots of new faces, but I think you’ll like it here. You’re not alone anymore.” Rey waved over two of her other students. “Connie and Lux will give you a tour of the place and show you to your rooms. Why don’t you spend the day getting settled and you can meet everyone at dinner.” 

The rest of the class went back to practicing their forms as the foursome giggled down the hallway to their chambers. Rey joined Jannah by the door as they observed the tiny Jedi in training. In her excursions, Jannah had found most of these kids by herself, lost amongst a galaxy in chaos. She waved at some of the younger ones who she had just dropped off a few weeks ago. 

“So,” Rey started. “Do we know how sensitive those two are yet?” 

“Finn didn’t read too much off of them when he escorted us in from the platform, which - by the way - has a lot more security than I remember. Care to share that story?” 

“Let’s just say I don’t do well with snide remarks about my kids.”

Jannah chuckled. “So you punched Admiral Atkin in the face? At the briefing?” 

“Yup.” 

The two women just stood in silence for a moment. Out of the corner of her eye, Jannah noted the dark circles under Rey’s eyes looked puffier than normal today. 

“So. When are you going to tell them you’re stepping down from the delegation or whatever they’re calling themselves these days?” Rey pressed her lips into a thin line and shot Jannah a look. “Look, I left them to their politics two weeks after we got here. Eight months is a hell of a lot longer than that. Do you really think Rose and Poe and Finn are going to hate you for putting your focus elsewhere?”

Rey didn’t answer for a moment, stoic as two of her older students cleared the floor for a full duel. 

“I don’t want them to think I’m abandoning them,” Rey’s voice was small. “Or that they need to keep worrying about me. It’s just...I know the Jedi before were involved with the Republic -- if that’s even what they all settle -- and I’m not entirely sure if that’s what we should be doing.”

“You’ve been spending way too much time with Beaumont and his books,” Jannah snorted. “But I get it. They’re kids.”

Jannah let the conversation hang there. 

For her, it was easy to walk away from the conference rooms and arguments and formal diplomacy. On Kef Bir, after she and the other troopers laid down their guns, duty was about who was with her and how she could help them. On Alan Kloss, after it was clear the fighting hadn’t ended, it was about how she could help whoever was still out there in the galaxy. Her bow staff was useless in negotiations. 

Rey would get there. Eventually. 

Instead, Jannah leaned against a wall, crossing her left leg over her right, and observed the little Jedi she found do their thing. Temiri and Oniho circled each other on the floor, slowly twirling Rey’s two blue sabers in their hands. She noted how tall the boys had become in the few months since she moved them and their friends from Alan Kloss to Coruscant. 

The two boys danced across the floor, parrying their strikes, ducking, swinging with control. 

“They’ve gotten good you know,” she offered as they finally clashed their blades together. “You would never believe that a year ago they were playing make believe on Canto Bight and now they’re actually Jedi.”

“You’re not a Jedi until you have your own lightsaber.” Rey sighed, as Temiri lost control of his saber and dropped it unceremoniously on the ground. “And they need their own. They’ll never realize their potential using someone else’s tool.” 

“So what’s the problem?” Jannah tilted her head towards the large window capturing the Coruscant skyline. “Just take them where you found yours. That old temple has to have a bunch of those crystal things in there right?”

Jannah didn’t miss the way Rey’s already pale face got a shade lighter. She ran her fingers over the darker hilt at her hip. 

“They’re not ready for what’s in there.” 

“Didn’t the Jedi have to go through trials or something like that back in the day?” 

Rey raised an eyebrow. “Now who’s spending too much time with Beaumont and his books.” 

“All I’m saying,” Jannah rolled her eyes and raised her hands. “Is that these kids have already seen a lot more than your typical kid should. I know that. You know that. They can handle it.”

Rey chewed her lip and Jannah placed a hand lightly on her shoulder.

“I understand wanting to protect them, Rey,” she said. “But they’re growing up. And that’s part of our job here isn’t? To let them grow up?” Jannah leaned back again and chuckled to herself. “And it’s not like there’s not another Force sensitive who could use a break from all that partisan bickering upstairs.”

“You just don’t want to take him with you on your next month-long outing.” Rey pouted. 

Jannah grinned. “You know Finn. He doesn’t like to be _that_ far away from the action -- or Poe.” 

****

“How much farther, Master Rey?” Temiri asked from the back of their small pack, trying -- but ultimately failing -- to keep the whine from his voice. 

Rey and Finn exchanged a look as they peered down at the two boys and the hundreds of stairs that stretched out beneath them. The imperial palace had been long abandoned -- the New Republic, and the First Order after that, left it as a haunting memorial to the darkness that could corrupt a good government. But the airspace was still fraught with who knows what kind of boobytraps the empire tasked their scientists to craft, so they were forced to park their speeder at base level. 

“You’ll have to do a lot more work than just these stairs once you’re inside,” Finn warned. “The place is a maze.” 

The two boys looked at each other with wide eyes. 

“But master! General Finn! How are we going to find our crystals in a place this big?” Oniho gasped. 

Rey just smiled calmly and pressed both boys’ hands flat against the smooth permacrete that was already warming in the early morning sunlight. 

“Reach out,” she said, closing her eyes as the force illuminated the bones of the palace under their feet. 

Ornate hallways, lined with dust and cobwebs, winded immediately under their fingers — the halls once lined with the emperor’s courtiers. But under that were defaced grand chambers, small personalized bunks, a heavily sealed vault. 

Rey pulled up their hands before they saw what lay beyond the jedi ruins. Her students wouldn’t need to go down far enough into the catacombs — ancient tunnels the jedi sealed off since eradicating the ancient sith tyrants. And beneath that? Even Rey didn’t know -- but the Force churned like current embedded into a deep sea bed. 

“This place, far, far below, was built on a well of the force. Can you feel that? The strength of it around you?” Her students slowly nodded. 

_That’s not all the force echoes with here._

Rey suppressed a shudder. “If you focus -- and I mean _really focus_ \-- the Force will guide you to exactly what you’re looking for. If you’re brave enough to find it.” 

She and Finn walked shoulder to shoulder as they followed the two boys into the darkened receiving hall. They watched as their charges made their way towards the dilapidated passageway that would lead them down into the bowels of the palace. Flashes of when Rey was here last glided through her mind like broken glass -- fragmented cold whispers, a vice-like grip in her chest, the hauntingly beautiful feeling of _something_ waiting. 

She should not warn them. The masters of old didn’t give out hints. The young ones needed to figure this out for themselves. 

“Don’t go deeper than the old Jedi ruins!” Rey called out, despite herself. “And stay together!” 

Finn held onto her shoulder as the boys disappeared from sight. 

“Can you do this? I can stay right here and wait for them if you need some air,” he offered. 

“I’m not leaving them,” Rey set her jaw. “I’m their teacher.” 

Finn gave her a level stare. Only for a moment. Then on with the mission.

After Rey’s first visit to the temple may have been a disaster on a more personal scale, she had still walked away with a backpack full of goods that were virtually priceless to at least certain members of the Resistance. A salvaged crystal for her new saber. Old texts for their resident historian. Plans for undeveloped warships -- in case the peace talks fell through, Finn insisted. And since they were already here, Blumont insisted they bring more back than just her students’ haul. 

“This place is way different than Beaumont described it. Still creepy. More archaic,” he shivered as he looked around. 

“Literally everyone has been spending too much time with Beaumont and his books,” Rey sighed. “Including Beaumont.” 

Finding the old library was easy. The emperor had left most of the jedi’s original structure in tact, although most of the shelves were lined with imperial propaganda. A necessary supplement for his courtiers. 

But if combing through the skeletons of starships taught her anything, it was that the best stuff was always found behind a locked door. The more conspicuous the better. 

Breaking the lock to the imperial war room was easy. Rey didn’t even need to use the Force -- just a loose pin she had nestled into the mess of her bun. Finn all but sprinted over to the counsel, immediately booting up the old system. Flicking through a few irrelevant holorecords, he let out a low whistle as he found something apparently worthwhile. 

“Rey do you know what this is?” 

“Uh, a list of old ships?”

“Old ships _and_ Empire-era weapons research,” his eyes were locked on the screen in front of him. “Rey. The First Order based all of their tech on these schematics. There are some in here that I didn’t even realize the Empire had started to develop -- why? Because it was invented last year.” He began to shuffle through his duffle. “If -- If I can get these back to Rose, and she _listens_ , we can reverse engineer some of the weapons the Loyalists haven’t even rolled out yet.”

“I thought the point of these past eight months was to eliminate the need for such aggressive negotiations?”

Finn slipped a drive into the counsel to start copying the holodata. “Peace is fragile Rey. We have to be prepared.” 

“I _know_ that Finn.” 

But Rey wasn’t prepared. Try as she might, the cool sensation sliding over her body made her jump. It wasn’t new -- but it shocked her just the same. 

She knew where it was leading her. It pulled her deftly, oblivious to leaving Finn alone in the war room, like every atom within her was magnetized. The massive onyx doors were familiar -- Rey found them on her first visit to the palace. 

_You know what you really came for. You could have it all Rey. You can find out if he’s out there -- your Ben Solo._

_Do it._

The command rumbled in her ears like low thunder. Hastily, Rey fumbled back, her labored breathing loud in the empty hall. She trembled where she stood. 

Behind those doors, Rey doubted she could hide any longer. She imagined herself on the Emperor’s throne once before -- what’s to stop her from doing it again. The Emperor, Darth Sidious -- her _grandfather_ \-- had many names, but there in his chambers, where his dark twisted scars on the Force reached for her, only one came to her: Palpatine. 

Once she crossed this threshold, Rey would no longer be able to put out of her mind the twisted family tree she had been left with after all her years of searching. It was her birthright -- whatever lay beyond -- but there were no free gifts she was learning. Not here. Not from him. 

The Force was cold around her. No hint of warmth, no trickle of anything besides herself. But the words of her master, from what seemed a long time ago, came back to her.

“Confronting fear is the destiny of a Jedi,” she whispered to herself. 

With a deep breath, Rey held up her arm, palm outstretched against the foreboding doors. She gritted her teeth as she mustered all her strength, feeling the Force lighten as it passed through her, and willed it to cut through her grandfather’s defenses. 

Whatever power he had imbued on this place resisted her. Phantom whips of lighting stung as it wrapped around her arms, across her back and down her legs. 

Rey thought about her parents. The unfortunate lot of them all. She thought about Leia. And Han. And Luke. Played like pawns for decades. She thought of all the systems and the lives and the families crushed by the wars. 

She thought of Ben. 

Her grandfather’s cackle reverberated around her -- but Rey drowned it out with a snarl she ripped from her throat. 

The doors burst open for her, the unintentional heir to the throne, as _her_ power overwhelmed the seals that protected the emperor’s secrets. 

Rey stalked into the throne room, sensing the answers she needed close by. 

“You took him from me,” her voice was low. “Now you’re going to show me how to get him back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So in case anyone forgot this character from TROS: Beaumont Kin is the nerd who knew about the Sith. 
> 
> I have very mixed feelings about this character that I am *trying* to work out in this fic. 
> 
> Also -- in this House we stan for Rey letting her feral side through.


	7. Chapter 7

Ben’s breath clouded around him in the cool air. It was all he could do, stand there and barely remember to breathe, as Rey pulled herself out from the water. 

She squared her shoulders, looked directly into the glass, and reached out her arm. Ben knew it wasn’t him that she was seeing. She told him that much, a lifetime ago. But it didn’t stop him from reaching back out. It didn’t stop every molecule in his body from being magnetized towards her. 

The air buzzed around him as he inched closer to the tips of her fingers, her tiny calluses pressed against the clear wall. He could feel the glass vibrate, shudder now that he was only a breath away. The sheer force of his bond with Rey reverberated in the time and space compressed between them. 

“Let me see them,” she whispered. “My parents.”

_Go to her. Bend this place to your will. Free yourself. Go to her._

He barely noticed it when the cave began to glow a soft blue -- thousands of bioluminescent butterflies swarmed together, covering the floor, the walls. One landed on the back of his hand. 

He could do it. She was there, right there at the tip of his fingers. All he had to do was touch her, the glass the would shatter, he’d be free and with her and he could fix everything and she wou--

She would never be the same. 

If he reached out now, escaped from this prison into his past, Rey would never reach out to him as Kylo Ren. She’d never come for him on Snoke’s stardestroyer, never fight for her life alongside him. Never realize the truth. Never choose herself. Never train with his mother. Never confront fear and evil itself. Never go back to FN or her gaggle of resistance friends. Or the Wookie that loved her. 

Ben snatched his hand back, branded by the weight of what he almost did. 

He followed her to the ground, both of them hissing in unison as the cold cavern floor dug into their knees. 

His head hung low, hand cradled to his chest. The tears -- hot and heavy -- stung at his eyes. 

“Rey,” he whispered. “Rey, I’m so sorry. I-- I can’t. If I leave this place, if I scoop you up in my arms right now, your world will unravel. I -- I can’t help you from here.” 

He stayed there, hunched in the fetal position, trapped behind nothingness, as Rey picked herself off up the floor. His eyes followed her as she wiped a trail of snot on her arm, brushed off her knees, and climbed her way out of the cave. To the rest of her life. To the best part of his. 

“I’ll come back to you sweetheart, I promise.” 

With a groan, Ben leaned back against the cavern wall and dug the heels of his palms into his cheeks. 

_I’m trying Rey. I promise._

He felt her before he saw her. Sensed the ripple in the Force as she materialized in this place. It was like a sip of warmth that bled through his numb body. She was the first real breath he had taken since his death. 

Rey, now wearing nothing but her breast band and loose tan trousers, kneeled before him. Her hair was down. And long. The scar one of Snoke’s men left on her arm was faded now -- healed? -- but the tan lines of her band remained. 

This was not the Rey who he watched in the cave. This was not the Rey wrapped in white and pristine in her Jedi temple. This Rey deeper circles under her eyes than he had ever seen. 

But, kriff, was she heaven, framed in the soft blue haze of a thousand glowing butterflies. She was sin, staring at him with hooded eyes. For the longest heartbeat of his existence, Rey just stayed there, pressed between his thighs, her breaths rapid and shallow. 

“What -- how -- Rey,” he started, but the words were stolen from him.

She was a lighting strike and him an open field, igniting a wildfire of chills across his flesh. 

Nothing else existed. Not this prison she had wormed her way into. Not the past. Not the questions she had licked away from his lips. Just her. The only thing reminding Ben of his own body was the heat of hers pressed up close. 

His mouth wrestled with hers, a desperate dance that pulled them both deeper. He gripped her bare waist and dug his fingers into the soft skin there - anchoring her. Anchoring them. Rey ground against him. He growled. She whimpered.

“You found me,” he panted against her lips. “I lov--” 

But her light was gone. Snuffed out like the weakest of flames -- not leaving a trace of an ember behind. 

“No,” Ben forced himself off the ground. “No. Bring her back! Rey!” His curse reverberated off the walls. “What was the point? What was the point of anything, _everything_ , if I can’t get back to her!” 

He was pacing now -- completely oblivious to the fact that he was becoming the eye of his very own storm. The blue butterflies swirled around him, almost as if they were trying to reach him, even as the winds of the Force energy that were being whipped into a cyclone. It battered the walls of the cave. The edge of the pond crashed back onto itself. Even the stars in the space beyond seemed to tremble.

She was there. Somehow. Really there and in his arms. Their bond had flared to life in that moment -- raw and electric and stable and home -- but it was blinked out. Erased. Like it never existed. 

And it left him hollow and jagged at the edges. 

The glass at the end of the cave shivered in his rage. Ben stared at it, still for only a moment. 

_Break through. Fight your way back to her. You owe the galaxy nothing. The Force nothing. It used you. It used her. Take back your life Ben. Let it all burn._

Ben took one, two, three steps forward -- the churning Force surging behind him, propelling him towards the only thing keeping him from Rey. 

“Ben no!” 

He snapped out of his reverie just in time to see a white hooded figure snatch his arm. They dragged him out of the cave, the Force whipping around them, as the cavern began to crumble. 

“Run!” 

\----

When the Force around them stopped quaking, Ben doubled over, gasping for air. His mysterious rescuer slowed and waited for him a few paces ahead. 

_So he wasn’t alone here._

But Ben knew better than to blindly trust a gift from the Force. 

“I appreciate the help back there, but...who are you? And where exactly are we?” 

Slowly, the white-clad figure turned around, letting their hood fall to their shoulders. His savior was a togruta, with orange skin and long white headtails with blue markings. She looked ancient, or at least 70, with deep-set wrinkles framing her clear blue eyes. 

“Of course,” a small smile crept onto her face as she leaned against her grey staff. “You wouldn’t remember me. I’m Ahsoka. Ahsoka Tano.”

Ben blinked. He had never heard of her from his family. Not from Luke or Tekka or their old books. Not from his mother or her old rebel friends. But Ahsoka Tano -- the fallen Force-wielder that helped put together his mother’s rebel alliance -- she was legendary. And alive in front of him. Studying him. 

“You’re so much like her,” she said after a moment. 

Ben’s breath hitched. It had been a long time since someone compared him to his mother. “You knew Leia?” 

“Yes," Ahsoka smiled. "But I was referring to your grandmother.” 

_Padme. Padme Amidala._

Ben had about a billion questions -- What was she like? How did she meet my grandfather? Did she really have that many dresses? But first things first. 

“You’re a Jedi?” The word was bitter in his mouth and he hung his head.. 

He braced himself for the wrath of judgment this sage would lash him with. At this point, when it came to the Jedi, he couldn’t separate Palpatine’s whispers and his own fears. 

“I am no Jedi. No more than you are Ben,” her voice was gentle. “Our paths are different. Forged on our own.” She winked when he looked up at her. “A little rougher around the edges, but a hell of a lot more exciting.” 

Ben blinked. “But I just don’t understand. I mean, how did you even find me? How are you even _here?_ ” 

“Ah,” Ahsoka considered him. “You’re lost. I can sense your feelings jumbling around. Breathe Ben.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “Breathe and let this place unfold before you.”

Feeling more daunted than he ever did at Luke’s temple, Ben tried. He closed his eyes, filled his lungs with air, and envisioned light seeping out all around him. When he opened his eyes the empty space was -- still empty -- but transformed. Pathways, portals, arches, bridges all surrounded him. The world between worlds illuminated before his very eyes, stretching into the great beyonds. The voices came back, ghosting on his skin.

“How…” the question died on his lips. 

“It’s a little beautiful, isn’t it? Always changing,” Ahsoka said. “I’ve been traveling through this realm for years. Trying to ensure it was safe. That the past was protected. The future secure. But it’s dangerous.”

“Dangerous?”

The old togruta sighed. “You witnessed that yourself. Back there in that portal. The past is delicate, the future that rests upon it even more so.”

“If I go back to the past...if anything changes,” Ben let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding, a faint smirk ghosting on his face. “Let the past die.” 

“No! No, Ben.” Ahsoka barely reached his chest, but she shook his shoulders with surprising force. “The past isn’t the way out for you. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to learn from it. That there’s nothing salvageable.” 

She reached down into a pocket hidden in her white cloak, and pulled out a rusted cross guard black saber. 

His saber. 

Ahsoka pressed it into his hands. The black paint had been scrubbed away in places by who knows how many years on the sandy floor of Kef Bir, hints of his old silver hilt peeking through. The cracked crystal within, sputtered to life in his palm. 

He read about Ahsoka’s sabers. How she redeemed them from a dark sider and healed the kyber within. But it was always theoretical to him. Not something he entertained for more than a moment in moments he had hidden away in his darkened quarters on the _Supremacy_.

“I don’t know how to do this,” his eyes lifted to meet hers. 

She closed her hands over his. “You do. You will. When the time comes.” 

Ben rolled his jaw, weighing the saber in his hand. The hilt than it had ever been, probably at least a bit waterlogged, but his saber was nothing if not sturdy. Eventually he nodded. “If not through the past, do you know how we actually _do_ get out of here?” 

A white Morai soared over Ben’s head out of nowhere and landed on Ahsoka’s shoulder. It nestled against her cheek with a soft coo. 

“Oh, I know where _I_ need to go. You have a different path,” she said. 

“Of course I do,” he deadpanned. “Mind pointing out which one?” 

“We’ll follow your guide.”

“My guide? Like a spirit guide?”

Ben whipped his head around -- scanning the space for his own little morai. Or maybe a lothwolf. Or maybe even a squall from Chandrila. 

“Ah there it is!” Ahsoka exclaimed. 

One of the glowing blue butterflies had followed them from their mad sprint from the cave. It fluttered delicately between them, so Ben held out a finger so it could rest its wings. The little creature paused only for a moment, pulsing with light, before heading off to a path winding its way to the right. 

_Follow the butterfly._

Somehow, it didn’t feel like the first time for him. 

**** 

They lost the butterfly as they stepped through a portal. The empty space rippled around them, fading away into a bright light. And as it faded, lush grasslands surrounded them. In the distance there was a majestic waterfall pouring into a gentle, lazy river. At its bend, not too far away, was a grand house with large domed roofs and ivy climbing its walls.

“I know this place…” Ben whispered. 

“It looks just like Naboo,” Ahsoka was a bit breathless. 

In a flash Ahsoka looked less..ancient… Her headtails were shorter, wrinkles gone and her blue eyes shined like crystal. But the moment passed and the old togruta remained before him. 

“You know where we are, don’t you?” Ben asked, as Ahsoka looked lost in thought. 

“Mortis looked different the last time I was here. With my master,” she let out a low, soft laugh. “Of course he would make it look like home for them.” 

Ben wanted to ask more questions, always more questions, but they all left his head when he saw the two figures approaching. One was a young man with sandy blonde hair and dark robes. The other, wrapped in his arms, was a slightly older woman, with long dark curls cascading over them both, in tan crepe dress. 

But it didn’t matter what she was wearing. Ben would know the woman with the butterflies and flowers in her hair anywhere. 

“Grandmother,” he breathed. 

Anakin was still nuzzling into Padme’s neck, pressing desperate kisses under her jaw, when she froze. 

“Ben?” she locked eyes with her grandson. “Ben! What are you doing here?” 

They -- grandson and grandmother -- ran to close the distance over the open field and Ben fell to his knees when he reached her. Padme cradled his head gently, brushing his dark hair away from his face with soft whispers. Just as she did when his nightmares came. 

Ben held to her tight, clinging to the soft folds of her skirt. “You’re real.” He whispered. “You’re real.” 

“Yes, my little angel,” she pressed a featherlight kiss to the top of his head. “I’m real. I’m here.” 

**** 

Ben felt a tinge of guilt as he stepped through the halls of the Varykino his grandparents had built in this realm of theirs. The one in realspace Snoke’s troopers had destroyed; Ben, then just a useless dog tied to his master’s command, was unable to stop them from ripping the ivy from the ground and the linens from the tables. 

Not here. No this Varykino had restored his ancestor all home to the glory days of House Naberrie. Fires were lit in the cozy parlors. Plants hung from the ceilings. The babble of the river danced through the halls. And his grandmother had a spread of food that would feed a small army. 

It was surreal to sit across from his grandparents -- a bowl of meiloorun fruits between them -- as if he was having a regular feast day breakfast with them. Especially after his grandfather thought an acceptable explanation amounted to a passing mention of old Mortis gods and prophecies. But as much as Ben wanted to press him about this old dyad and their misguided father and the fact that Ahsoka just so happened to _die_ here -- for once there was only one question rolling around in his head. 

“Why didn’t you come to me?” Ben’s question stampeded over the jovial conversation Anakin had struck up with his old padawan. 

“The voice that came to me, my _entire_ life, the voice in the mask. That wasn’t you. It was never you. It was Palpatine.” Ben took a steadying breath. “I know that now. But didn’t you...why didn’t you ever come to me, grandfather?” 

Anakin set his utensils down gently, rolled his jaw and looked up into his grandson's eyes. 

“I wanted to Ben,” his voice was barely a whisper but it cut through the silence like a knife. “But, I-- I had done horrible, _horrible_ things to your mother. And she was rightfully distant from me. Then, you came along. And I could sense her fear. It was like a seismic ripple through the Force. She was afraid of failing you Ben. Of the dark side being too much of a burden on you like it was for me. Like it almost was for her and your uncle. Because of me.”

“Well, I guess she was right about that.”

Anakin shook his head. “No. I should have protected you. Palpatine was there. You know he was. At the earliest moments. And I stayed away, thinking I could protect you from my shadow.” He swallowed thickly. “By the time I realized staying away was hurting you more, Palpatine had sunk his claws into your mind. He was too strong for me to get to you." 

Ben was silent for a moment. “I...I understand grandfather. But I wasn’t really alone for all those years. You were there, weren’t you?” 

Padme nodded, his mother’s smile on her face. 

“I understand,” Ben repeated. “We fell for the same trap ultimately. It was my choice. I could have gone home.”

Padme reached across the table and gripped Ben’s hand with more strength than he thought she could muster. “Ben Organa Solo, you listen to me. Palpatine twisted your grandfather’s best intentions. He hunted your uncle’s protective instincts. He preyed on your mother’s only hope for you. He maneuvered me into delivering my planet, my Republic, my husband and quite nearly my entire family into his grasp.” She locked eyes with him. “You resisted him longer than any of us.” 

Ben wasn’t sure what was supposed to come next. A group hug? A promise to keep him here in their home for the rest of his existence? The rest of their meal? But it wasn’t a bone-rattling rumble that cracked the ground beneath their feet. 

In an instant Varykino was crumbling around them, much like it did when he was last here, still donning a child’s mask. 

But in the chaos Ben could hear nothing. Nothing but the desperate cry in an unmistakable lilt.

“BEN!”

“Rey?” Her name fell from his lips. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all! 
> 
> Please note I've up the rating from T to M on this fic because of a sex scene that will be coming up in a couple of chapters. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! <3

Rey had been in two of her grandfather’s throne rooms before. 

One was stark crimson and suffocatingly soundproof. A stage for his puppet. The second was grey and rumbling with geysers of energy. A tomb for a man mostly dead. But both had the DNA of the Emperor coursing through them -- red guards, high vaulted ceilings, an ostentatious atmosphere designed to intimidate the moment one stepped inside. 

But this...this room was personal. As close to the inky black soul of Palpatine as Rey could imagine. It was unlike every persona he had paraded in front of the galaxy. The smooth black floor was broken up by a plush deep blue rug. Several oil paintings of Naboo -- the lake country, the central palace, the planet from far above -- hung across his vast chambers. He had ensured his personal abode included a view of his kingdom, the cityscape of Coruscant stretching out and twinkling in the bright sunlight. It was a powerful view, like a eagle's nest. 

None of it gave Rey comfort. 

There were goosebumps on her arm as she stepped across the room, her footsteps echoing off the arches carved into the ceiling. Despite the rest of the imperial palace falling to ruin, this place was _pristine_ \-- held together by some old magik better than Palpatine himself was. It prickled something inside her, so Rey ignited her golden saber and let it drag against the stone floor, leaving a jagged cavern in her wake.

Whatever her sick, twisted grandfather had left behind pulled at her through the Force. It wanted her to find it. There should have been a voice in the back of her head, warning about walking into some sort of trap, but Rey continued to prowl for clues. She had already snapped the barrier on the door; whatever was waiting for her would bend just as easily. She would make sure of that. 

She crossed to a corner of the room where a reading nook, of all things, was set up by an abandoned fire place. Kicking a plush velvet chair out of her way and knocking a golden lamp off its table, Rey began to snatch books off the shelves, glance through the pages, and toss them over her shoulder. Most of them told her nothing more than the Emperor had a penchant for the histories for the galaxy’s greatest leaders and long-winded poems. Things he was too proud to simply pursue on a holo, but bind on actual parchment. 

_There has to be more._ Rey whipped herself around in a circle, growling in frustration. _I will shred this room down to its last thread._

She eyed a small game board lined with black and white figurines next to the fireplace. An image of her grandfather twisted inside her; the old man settling down with a small satisfied smile and a large glass of wine, to leisurely play some archaic game as bombs rained out in a holo behind him. It made something large and rabid stir against her ribcage, pushing her to swing her saber up into a high arc and snap it down -- hard. 

The force of the impact blew Rey backwards and sent her saber skittering across the room. Yet the board remained untouched. It hadn’t even wobbled from its spot. 

At first glance, the table was nothing but plain marble, rooted securely to the floor. It was relatively plain, a deep black that matched the floor, save for a small crest at the base of the game board. On it, three monstrous creatures were interlocked in savage combat, splayed against a scarlet backdrop. Again. Ostentatious. It felt familiar to Rey, in a way she decided she would never want to know. 

Guided by a feeling in her gut, Rey crawled back across the floor and pressed her palm flat against the crest, not even wincing when she felt a small blade slash across it. She kept her hand there, letting her blood seep onto it. Only once the crest began to pulse and glow beneath her palm did she pull it back, letting her tainted blood pool on the floor. 

_Palpatine wanted a replacement. A host. Never an heir._ Rey smiled grimly. _He miscalculated._

Not that long ago, she was caught in her grandfather’s clutches and he told her that her parents were weak. It was a simple statement, designed to spark her desperation and anger. Words were always his sharpest weapons, she had been warned. 

But he didn’t need deception and lies that time. She did. Rey knew it, deep down; knew that alone in the Sith’s cathedral with her friends dying in the skies above her, she clung to the only bit of light she could. Even if it was merely made of flash paper. 

Ben wasn’t with her there. Not yet. But he had given her a reason to defy Palpatine back on his star destroyer. How could Ben, even with his family as flawed as they were, ever comprehend the truth? 

But here, now, Rey didn’t need to be brave. She didn’t need to be the last stronghold against impending doom and darkness. Her friends were safe. Ben was gone. And her feelings were simmering closer to the surface than they had in months. 

With a shuddered breath, Rey let go of the last bit of shiny wrapping she had used to preserve the memory of her parents.

With everything laid bare, Rey knew three things were undeniably true. 

One, her parents did become nothing to flee Palpatine’s control. Two, they did love her, even if only in the brief moments when their inebriated haze lifted. Three, it wasn’t enough to keep them from selling her off to save their own skin and they told themselves it would protect her. 

Three: Rey could only guess that ultimately, they were too sloshed -- after celebrating the ease of their escape -- that they truly couldn’t remember where they had left their little girl when Palpatine’s assassin came to call. 

“They were nobody. They were weak,” she admitted into the quiet room. “But I’m not.” 

She raised her bloody hand, and with the image of every tally mark, every tear she ever shed for them crystal clear in her mind’s eye, Rey wielded the Force like a spear and launched it at the table. 

_Yield._

The top of the board blew off and a holo projector immediately crackled to life. 

“Master,” an old man, deep set wrinkles and piercing blue eyes peeking out from underneath his flat black cap, bowed. The holo had him groveling at the foot of a throne Palpatine had placed in the center of the room. “I’ve been reviewing the recordings of Lord Vader’s time on Mustafar.” 

The holo blurred and in the place of the shriveled servant was Darth Vader, cloaked in his shroud of darkness and terror. His anger radiated even from the decades old recording. But the angle was ajar, as if the holocam was stashed haphazardly in the corner of what appeared to be a small cavern. Obsidian walls were etched with the ancient ruins of the Sith -- a language Rey could recognize even if she couldn’t understand it -- and an altar was hewn from the rock in the center of it all, glowing with poisoned force energy. 

The Sith Lord was not alone. With him was an admiral -- though it looked like his time had long passed. His face was distorted, as if the muscles were working not of their own volition, as if they were being weathered away from the inside out.

_“It is time my lord,” the admiral hissed in a disjointed voice. “All will be right this time.”_

Rey’s eyes widened as she watched Darth Vader bleed the Force itself inside that cavern, as the walls turned a deep red and lighting crackled between the very midichlorians being torn apart. And when the storm had settled, there was _something_ different -- an entire wall was gone. In its place was some kind of doorway, oozing black lava, but leading to a place much more ethereal than Mustafar. 

The projector blurred again and the scene shifted. Vader was now on top of some sort of onyx pillar, wind whipping around him. With hands slightly trembling, he fixed a massive, curved kyber crystal with a pinkish hue to a large machine securely fastened to the pillar’s base. 

He stepped away slowly, as the crystal began to glow, a wisps of light blue energy -- _life force energy --_ flowed into it from every direction. Rey groaned. She didn’t know _when_ this happened, or to whom, but she felt the agony reverberating in her own bones. A thousand life forms -- intelligent species and the twisted fauna of the planet -- crying out with their last breaths. She had felt that pain before. 

_“Soon, my love, you’ll be back in my arms,” Vader’s voice was soft even behind the modulator. “I’m going to rescue you from that place Padme. I’m strong enough this time.”_

_A silhouette of a woman, her arms outstretched, appeared. “Stop this, Ani! Before it’s too late. I love you.”_

“As you can see master,” the wrinkled man reappeared, far less disturbed by the holo than Rey was. “While the experiment was ultimately unviable on Mustafar we were able to gather _excellent_ intel on the Netherworld of the Unbeing.” 

He rubbed his hands together, the words tumbling out of his mouth now with no fear of who they were addressing. “This was the breakthrough we were looking for. We can repeat the experiment here on Lothal. Or even Exegol -- we’ve sent coordinates to the Observatory.” 

Rey had backed herself up against her grandfather’s throne. His researcher bowed at her feet and there was a rush of pleasure in the power there. Heady. 

“Show me more,” her voice was firm, even if she wasn’t entirely sure what she was commanding. 

The image flickered at her request, bringing the old man back. But he was more gray now. Not just in the hair, but his actual skin looked leathered and drained. He was trembling now, head hung low. There was smoke billowing out behind him and Empire-era troopers scrambling in the background.

“My sincerest apologies,” his voice quivered. “Master, the boy, he was stronger than we realized. But! The temple here may be destroyed, but you can try again on Coruscant!” 

The man flinched, but the old holo hadn’t picked up Palpatine’s long lost words. “Ah, I see. Of course you’ve already tried that my Lord. But there are _other_ options. I swear it.” 

Those were his last words. The air caught in his throat. His eyes bulged. His body strained for relief. It took all of three seconds for the secret Sith Lord to kill his servant from halfway across the galaxy. 

Another figure stepped into the frame. It was the same tall, blue admiral she had seen in her dream this morning. With the wayfinder. His face was a stone mask -- unmarred by the murder that had just unfolded. 

“I am on my back to Lothal now from Mustafar,” he said with a low bow. “Yes, yes I understand my lord. I can prepare for that and bring the boy aboard the ship.” 

He lifted his eyes up to meet Rey’s. “The power of reality will soon be in your grasp. A prize no Jedi or Sith has never been able to reign. All of it -- yours.” 

Rey didn’t move once the holo flickered out for good. Her mind was reeling. The echoes of what she had just seen, the scribbles Ben had left behind, the pages she could never decipher were all tripping over each other. It was too much to sort out now, but one thing was clear. Her grandfather had the answer. 

It was what he was always after. This in between place was his key to immortality, to unlimited power. She had felt it, when her life was blending with Ben’s and switching the broken spirit of her grandfather back into his own skin. 

She wheeled around and faced the throne. It was far simpler than the one on Exegol -- curved and delicate, romantic even -- but as pitch black as Palpatine’s own heart. It was there he had devised this. It was there that he had plotted the path of a young boy, twisted his broken heart for decades, before turning to his grandson and doing the same. The painful truth of it all swirled inside her like a hurricane -- violent, chaotic, and powerful. 

But then the eye came, everything stilled, and Rey tore apart the seat of Palpatine’s power with one quiet phrase: “It’s mine now.” 

The wound she blasted into Plapatines’ chamber, surrounded by shattered bits of velvet and stone, didn’t bleed. It was just there, gaping and dark. 

And hollow. 

Peering in, Rey found a chute leading straight down into an abyss. But there was something down there. Voices ghosted against her skin. They were dark and light, a misty grey in the Force, not unlike the ones that led her to the tree on Ahch-to. And to the cave. 

_The answers are yours for the taking. Find him. At any cost._

Rey stepped up to the edge of the jagged hole in the floor and peered down. It was pitch black, and deep enough that she couldn’t sense the bottom. But she could sense something else -- the voices. They were louder, calling up to her, guiding her somewhere. 

The comlink on her wrist chirped, reminding her that she had to meet Rose soon; that they all had to venture back to the old Senate building for another meeting with the loyalists. Somewhere back in the hallway, Finn was looking for her. 

“Rey!” Finn’s voice was coming closer, the sound of his heavy boots echoing off the marble walls. “Rey! We have to go.” 

Rey didn’t look away from the pit stretching out below her. In the back of her mind, there was a tiny voice -- an alarm bell ringing in the far, far distance -- trying to pull her back. To remind her of her duties. But the voices, the force around her, it needed her to see something. It was promising her something. 

_You deserve this. You don’t owe anyone, anything. You’ve already made your sacrifice._

With Finn’s footsteps nearing the doorway to Palpatine’s chambers, Rey tugged her navy blue hood low over her head and jumped feet first into the darkness.

*** 

Wrapping the Force around her like a cocoon to slow her descent, Rey landed with a soft thud, rolling three times and kicking up a cloud of dust. She had no real concept of how long she was falling. It could have been a long minute or thirty. The darkness still surrounded her, but the sound of her saber clanging against the ground echoed in the space, clueing her into just how large of a cavern she fell into. 

She pulled herself up onto her knees and stood gingerly, igniting her golden saber for light. There wasn’t much to see at first, just more black space, but after taking a few steps forward, Rey’s toes caught at the base of a staircase. Slowly, she made her way up onto a small platform, empty save for a large basin in the center. 

The imprints on the Force were heavy here. Light and Dark. Twisting around in the atmosphere of the cavern. In the midst of it all a vision slithered into her mind: a frail hand, blue flames, a twisted smile covered half in shadow. 

Without hesitation Rey stuck her hand, still smarting from the board’s blade, over the basin and closed her fist to squeeze out three drops of blood.

“Surrender your secrets,” her voice was raspy in the silence. “Show me what I need.”

Everything ignited in a single heartbeat. Blue flames burst from the basin, licking at her hand but cool against her skin. A ring of similar fire framed the base off the staircase and lined a runway that stretched out behind her. 

It was clear Rey had found herself in some sort of temple -- ancient by the looks of it. The architecture was massive, but simple: large flat slabs of stone reached back up towards the surface. They formed a semi circle around the cavern, the platform at their center. Each one was aglow with red sigils etched into the stone -- older than the Jedi, older than the Sith. 

Turning herself around, Rey made her way across the runway, a thin strip of obsidian rock stretching over a chasm. But she didn’t need to remind herself to not look down into its shadowy depths -- all of her attention was locked towards the structure in front of her; pulled effortlessly towards it like a moth to the flame. 

Two plateaus rose up from the ground, forming a narrow canyon between them. As Rey drew closer, she could make out it wasn’t a mere darkness there -- it was unfathomable beyond. A place between places. A sprawling cosmos glittered with stars and nebulas and thousands of shining life forms. It was a familiar pull, like deja vu. She _knew_ this place. Called to it before when she was half dead and her heart was thrown into a pit. 

She held her hand up and rested it on a nothingness, delicate but there. A veil between this realm and the next. Her heart ached, fluttering in her chest. Hope was a gamble it didn’t want to make. 

“Please,” she whispered. “Let me see him.”

She had asked the Force this so many times before. And the only time it ever listened, ever heeded her pleas, was when she was an empty vessel; peaceful, ready for it to course through her. 

Rey was not peaceful now. 

She was lighting . Every emotion -- hope, hurt, anger, regret, skepticism, hunger, love -- thundered through her body, churning the Force around her and charging it with power and pain. The cavern walls burned brighter around her and began to tremble. She was the epicenter of her own earthquake. 

The veil trembled against her palm. She could rip it. Tear it to shreds and cast it aside and take what it kept from her. 

_Do it. Take back what was stolen from you._

“Rey!” There was a deep voice somewhere far behind her. It sounded distorted; like drifting to her through a vat of water. Finn, most likely, but he’d be too late. Whatever was waiting for her, it was close; Rey could feel it vibrating in her bones. 

The stars blurred into streaks of blue and white, speeding past her portal and carrying her to her heart’s desire. Until they came to an abrupt stop, in someone’s kitchen. Under normal circumstances, Rey would have been taken aback by the grandness of it all -- golden goblets, massive table taken with food and ivy climbing up the arched ceilings. She would have been shocked at the guests at the table -- a old orange alien, and the couple she saw in her vision this morning, happy and alive.

But she didn’t notice any of that. Just a tuff of wild dark hair, broad shoulders, and a low rumbling voice that crashed over her like a warm wave. 

“Ben!” Rey shouted his name over the din of the thundering cavern behind her. 

He whipped around and his dark eyes immediately found hers. Their bond flared to life, a thread so strong it practically glowed in the force. Every molecule in her being gravitated towards him, suddenly feeling balanced and whole. Before, it was like she was alone in an unbalanced orbit, and now things only felt right with her other half so close -- two binary stars canting towards each other. 

They each took a step toward each other, steady even though the space between rippled and their surroundings crashed down around them --- ivy covered ceiling mixing with dark debris from the cavern. 

“How are you doing this?” He had asked her that question once before, and again he was staring at her with awe painting his every feature. 

She wanted to cry. She wanted to laugh. Most of all, she wanted to rip through the thin veil keeping them apart and launch herself into his arms. 

But she was too late. 

Four precisely aimed single blaster shots hit the walls on either side of her, burying the portal -- and Ben -- behind a thick seal of rock. A hand grabbed hers and pulled her along blindly back through the canyon towards the cavern. Rey struggled, sobbing and cursing, trying to fight her way back towards Ben. He was there. He was real. He was alive. And he slipped through her fingers _again_.

“Let me go!” She growled, yanking her arm back and narrowly missing a massive chunk of rock hurtling down from below. “I have to get him back. I can get him back, Finn!” 

Finn didn’t waste precious time arguing. Throwing an arm around Rey’s waist, he threw her kicking and screaming over his shoulder and sprinted across the runway, down the staircase and back towards the safety of the chute they came down through. Palpatine’s suite was too far up to see, but there was far less risk of being crushed than in the cavern, the tremors still reverberating out around them. 

“Have you absolutely lost your mind!” Finn shouted, dropping her unceremoniously down on the ground. “You break into the Emperor’s old chambers. Jump down into _pitch black darkness_ and set off an earthquake? And you don’t think of mentioning any of this on the comlink?” 

He paced around to the farside of the chute, putting more distance between him and the cavern. But his frustration simmered when he saw Rey hadn’t moved to pick herself up off the ground. She just laid there, face down, whimpering into the dust. Pain, true deep anguish rolled off of her in tidal waves. 

Finn sighed and kneeled down to rub small circles between his friend’s shoulder blades. “Rey. It’s fine. It’s going to be okay.” 

“I lost him,” Rey’s voice cracked. “I could have saved him. Brought him back. But I failed.” 

“That wasn’t really Ben. It couldn’t have been.”

“So you _did_ see him!” She glared up at Finn then, tears streaming down her face. “You had to have felt it. The Force is strange here Finn. I know. I’ve felt it before...on Exegol.”

“Rey,” Finn said as gently as he could. He was wary of the unstable spark in her eye, the chaotic energy she continued to churn around them. “This isn’t you. This place is strong in the dark side. You can feel that.” 

“It’s just old Finn.” 

He shook his head, “No. Rey. Listen very carefully to me, okay? I’m here. But you have to snap out of this. This place is doing something to you.”

“Doing something to me?”

“Yes,” he urged. “It’s not your fault. It must be affecting you because you’re a Palpatine. The dark side is pushing you into this, this angry desperate state.” 

Rey’s blood ran cold. She stiffened under Finn’s hand, still rubbing circles on her back. 

“You’re going to be fine,” he continued, looking up towards the surface. “Your kids are up there right now, working on a way to get us up and---”

Finn flew backwards and was pinned against the trembling wall of the chute. 

Rey stood, slowly, her hair hanging in curtains and blocking out everything. She felt him struggling against her will; his fear bright and palpable in the force. But whether it was for her or for him -- it didn’t matter anymore. 

Finn thought she was channeling the dark side? What did he know? About anything? About what she lost? About moving on with half a soul in her body? 

Rey, her face still angled towards the ground, flicked her eyes up at Finn, “You think this is because I have some old man’s blood running through my veins? That because he was evil, there must be some genetic trigger coded into me?”

“Rey, I--”

She tightened the pressure around him -- not enough to cause any serious damage, just enough to keep him from interrupting. 

“I’m not brainwashed, Finn,” she growled. “I’m kriffing _hurt_. The Jedi? The light? It left me for dead once I destroyed Palpatine.”

Pebbles began to crumble off the sides of the chute -- the tremors only escalating in their strength now -- but they hung there suspended in the pool of Rey’s power. 

“I gave up my life,” she continued. “And that was fine. I was fine with that. Knowing you and Jannah and Rose and even Poe were going to be safe and alive and happy and free. But then Ben.” Her voice trembled. “Ben came back, saved me, and then _died in my arms._ And no one helped him. I was left alone.” 

Sparks danced at the edges of her vision. Blue lighting tickled at her fingertips. 

“And just now, I had a chance to get him back, Finn. I could have saved him. I could be _with_ him right now,” Rey was yelling through her tears. “But you stopped me.” 

Finn’s gasped in Rey’s hold. He had been watching the Force unravel around her, the storm she was whipping with her sheer will. But now he only saw how red her eyes were, how ragged her breathing was. 

“So now, I get to be angry. Here, in this kriffing hole. I can be upset. And not have to pretend that my nightmares are just like yours or Poe’s or Rose’s and not because the love of my life haunts my dreams. And he’ll continue to because I will never, ever, be able to get another chance to bring him ba--”

Rey crumpled to her knees before she could finish. With a cry that ripped from deep in her chest, her hold on Finn vanished and a torrent of energy erupted. The chute lit up with blue lighting, spiraling around them in a chaotic vortex and up towards the surface.

Neither of them spoke when everything had settled. Finn just gingerly made his way over and folded her into his arms. Her sobs were the only thing left trembling. 

Their com links chirped insistently up at them, shattering the delicate silence.

“Rey! Finn!” Rose’s voice, tinged with panic, crackled in over the comms. “We need you both ready for immediate extraction from the temple in two minutes. This is a code redux.”

“What happened?” Finn asked, helping Rey to sit up. 

There was chaos in the background of Rose’s transmission. “Go! Go! Go! We do not want to be here when those cruisers come in. We’ll catch up at the rendezvous point.”

“Sorry Finn, I can’t explain much now,” she huffed. “But whatever triggered that tremor, it wasn’t just Coruscant that felt it. Our radar is showing there’s been aftershocks shuttering across the galaxy. We don’t even know how long the hyperspace routes will stay stable for. Just get out and get ready for extraction.” 

“What about the negotiations?”

“Finn!” Rose snapped, but Rey cut in. 

“We’ll be there.” Rey heard the words come out of her mouth, but they sounded a million miles away. 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: brief (one paragraph) mention of Padmé pregnant with Luke and Leia

This was hell. This was his own personal hell designed by whatever sadistic eternal beings controlled the Force. It was the only thing Ben was sure of at this point. 

Why else drag him through this? Why else dangle Rey, alive and well and  _ real _ , and then snatch her away like she was wiped from existence? No, this was his punishment for every single damn thing he did in his life. He plotted and he killed and he hurt  _ so many people _ that he loved and the Force sentenced him to an eternity of torture. 

Ben collapsed back into his chair, only vaguely aware that Varyikino was crumbling and the ground was quaking. 

“Anakin,” Ahsoka's voice sounded far away, both her and the rubble crashing down around them echoed. 

“Yeah, yeah I see it.” his grandfather rushed past him, peering out of one of the massive arched windows. “I’ve never seen the skies like this. Not since — since…”

“The old gods died.” Ahsoka joined Anakin at the window. The soft golden sunset morphed into a sickly, distorted yellow, draining the color out of the vibrant plants quivering on the shaking ceiling. “It doesn’t look like we have much time.”

The white morai flew off Ahsoka's shoulder and perched itself onto Ben’s forearm. It nestled against him softly and looked up with wide eyes, cooing sadly. 

It took a moment to sink in, but the truth came crashing in, it threatened to drown him. 

“This is all my fault.”

“You should go now Ahsoka,” Anakin was staring, wide eyed, at his grandson. “You need to get back in case this whole place goes. You’re the only one that can help her now.”

“But what about—?”

“ _ Now _ ,” Anakin was already making his way towards the main hall, pulling his old padawan behind him. “You’ve done more than I can ever thank you for Snips. But now you have to save yourself. Hurry!”

Ahsoka looked like she wanted to argue but it lasted only for a moment. She hugged Anakin tightly, and took one long, last look at Ben before sprinting into the rubble with the morai flying after her. To a place he couldn’t follow and she couldn’t lead him. 

This was just another circle of hell, wasn’t it? He hadn’t caused enough destruction in life and had to bring some curse down on his grandparents paradise?

Ben knew something was off the moment he woke up after dying on Exegol. That every step he took made this weird in-between place more and more unstable. That everytime he even came close to Rey, somehow still tethered to her, the force felt like it unraveled around him. 

He felt nauseous. It was the only discernible thing he could even remotely describe as an emotion, but he clung to it. 

_ Damn them all Ben. Let it all die. Do it. Just let it all go. They never cared if you were happy. Why worry about them now?  _

Ben clamped his hands around his ears, rocking slightly in his seat. Terror ripped through his hollow shell, filling him like it did when he was five and woke up alone in the dark.

“I ruin everything I touch. It's all my fault,” his voice was soft as he repeated the words, a litany from his childhood bubbling up to the surface. “I ruin everything I touch.” 

Suddenly, there were warm hands, smaller and softer than his, holding his wrists and pulling his arms down gently. Padmé was kneeling in front of him, unafraid and unflinching. She patiently waited, just looking up at him with her arms outstretched, as he blinked down at her. 

His head was foggy, like he was waking up from a nightmare, as Ben folded himself into her embrace. 

“It’s alright Ben,” she shushed him, stroking his hair, and spoke only so he could hear her. “Don’t listen to lies. Be strong Ben. Be brave.”

Ben pulled back to look at her. “You hear it too?” 

Padmé nodded, her face sullen. “But we can’t talk about that. Not here. Not now.” She cast a furtive look around, as if someone was hiding amongst the cascading rubble, and pulled Ben to his feet. “Follow your grandfather sweetie. We have to get you out of here and there’s not much time left.” 

Ben felt like he was five years old again. Covered in a cold sweat, the raspy whisper of a disembodied voice ringing in his head and being led by the hand as he trailed after his grandmother. 

They ducked and weaved around crashing bolders and vines of the Naberrie family villa. Padmé didn’t flinch once or cry for her broken home. She just pressed ahead, pastel skirts billowing out behind her, and Ben wondered if she looked this fearless during the Clone Wars. 

She only paused for a moment when they reached Anakin, stretching up onto her toes to press a kiss against his cheek. He watched as his grandparents held each other, trust and devotion blindly apparent in the way they pressed their foreheads together — entirely unphased by the destruction rippling out around them. 

Luke and Leia never really knew their parents, so Ben only knew about their infamous relationship from the history holos preserved by the Empire. He always remembered it was painted as a torrid affair - but this, this was true love...so how did everything go so wrong? 

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this Padmé,” Anakin looked anguished, but his wife was still calm. 

“But there’s nothing different either of us would have done,” she cupped the side of his face, and Anakin leaned into it, closing his eyes for a moment. “He’s all that matters now.”

Ben froze — all the cold terror in his body turning into icy guilt. They were talking about him. They were going to give up everything for him. 

“Come on Ben,” Anakin grabbed him firmly by the shoulders. “We have to get you downstairs before this whole place collapses on us.”

It wasn’t that far of a run. Even with the debris and unstable ground, Ben could have made it down the arched hallway to the shadowy staircase at the other end his grandfather pointed to without breaking a sweat. But before he could take a single step he heard a soft rustle of fabric and quiet thud behind him. 

He didn’t think it was possible for his stomach to drop any lower, but seeing his grandmother collapsed on the ground lodged an anchor deep in his chest. 

Padmé was writhing in pain and contorted over the rubble. Space began to distort around her, pulling her body in every direction. Violet and crimson lighting encased her, cracking reality and leaving the quickest of glimpses into  _ somewhere _ else, somewhere dark and chaotic and cold. 

“Go Ben!” Padmé’s voice rumbled like thunder, splintering the ground under her palms. “Run!”

Panic and guilt bubbled up in Ben’s chest and threatened to suffocate him as he clammored back to try and reach his grandmother. He had to save her. He just had to. But Anakin blocked him, pushing him back squarely in the chest, and practically dragged Ben down across the treacherous hall. 

“What are you doing?!” Ben screamed over the din of the still-rumbling quakes. “We can’t just leave her there!” He scrambled to push his grandfather off him, but Anakin kept a firm grip. “We have to go back! We have to go back for her!”

“It's too late Ben,” his grandfather was curt. He kept his tear-stained face focused on their exit and his hold on Ben tight. “We can’t save her. She’s passed through to the other side. You can’t go there and I can’t risk not being able to get back to help you.”

Ben didn’t stop struggling, he couldn’t, until Anakin shoved him backwards down a wide stone staircase. He stumbled down the first few feet, catching himself on a quivering wall, just as his grandfather sprinted in behind him. But as Ben tried to make his way back up and to his grandmother but a massive chunk of the ceiling, or the floor or the actual sky crashed down, blocking his only exit. It plunged the already shadowy staircase into nearly total darkness, save for the barest sliver of sickly yellow light seeping through a crack. 

A growl ripped from Ben’s chest as he banged his fists against the behemoth mass of rock. He was so close dammit. If only he had been just faster, or just smarter to turn around and grab her while he still could. It was  _ all _ his fault. All of it. Ben paced by the blocked path, chest heaving, his fingers itching to ignite the chaotic blade on his hip and hack his way out. 

But he saw Anakin, with the same light blue eyes his uncle had, the same eyes that were always watching him find new ways to mess up, to be the biggest kriff up in the entire family. But there wasn’t any judgement or, worse, pity in Anakin’s eyes. He was just waiting patiently, giving Ben space to just  _ be.  _

The realization deflated Ben a bit, and the weight of it all sunk in. His limbs like lead, he slid to the ground, still unstable as he was. 

“What is happening?” he asked, running his hand through his hair. He was entirely out of answers or any clever ideas. “I just — I need to know  _ something.  _ I just keep making things worse and I don’t know why. Or how I can stop. Please. Grandfather.” Ben shuddered, but it was time. Time to name the dark sticky feeling in his chest before it consumed him again. “I’m so  _ tired _ . Tired of feeling frustrated and lost. It's exhausting.”

Anakin walked back up and knelt down besides Ben, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder. “To be angry is to be human.” He let out a long sigh. “I think a lot of time people forget that. They’re so worried about going down a dark path that they reign themselves in too tightly. They’re afraid to feel anything bad at all.” 

Anakin ran his hand through his own hair - a mannerism that made Ben wonder, if only for a fleeting moment, if he shared more than just unhealthy coping habits with his grandfather. “But I do owe you an explanation.” 

Ben tensed, unsure if he was  _ really _ ready to hear whatever bombshell was coming next. But what other choice was there really? 

“How would Obi explain this…” Anakin muttered at first. “See Ben, there’s these three planes of existence - Realspace, the Netherwold and this one, the—”

“The world between worlds.” Ben cut in, remembering those old texts he spent so much time pouring over. “It’s a sort of middle ground right? The ‘bridge between all time and space.’” He emphasized his point with air quotes. “But what does that have to do with me?”

“I forgot you actually liked studying as a padawan. You definitely got that from your grandmother,” Anakin chuckled. But then his face grew serious, a flicker of worry wrinkles creasing across his forehead. “You were supposed to go where all souls go Ben, when they become one with the force. But we couldn’t let that happen. Not to you. Not yet. Not after everything you went through.”

“We?”

“Well there’s too many to name, and you don’t know most of them but really it came down to your uncle and your mother,” Anakin paused, searching for the right words. “It's a rare thing. I’ve only ever seen it done once in my life but between the two of them, they did it.”

“Did what?” Ben’s heart was hammering in his chest. After everything, they were still looking out for him? After everything he did? 

“Your mother, she was able to preserve a bit of her life force in that realspace. Just long enough to pass it to you when…”

“I died.”

Anakin looked guilty. “Only for a moment..but, yes, when you died. Passing that bit of energy to you stopped you from - how should I put this? - losing touch with your soul entirely. You didn’t get past this middle place - the realm of souls is much harder to come back from, trust me.”

“But I still don’t understand,” Ben sat up and leaned in, his aches and sore muscles forgotten now that he was finally getting more pieces to this unsolvable puzzle. “Why did that work? I’m what? Only half dead? A quarter? _ An eighth? _ ”

“No, no you’re very much alive now. I’d say probably eighty-eight percent— at least,” Anakin ruffled Ben’s hair. “That was your Uncle Luke’s idea. He realized you and Rey —  _ great _ girl by the way — were a dyad and—”

Palpatine’s words came back to haunt him.

“It’s a power like life itself,” Ben whispered. 

“Exactly! Exactly,” Anakin enthused. “Your uncle learned about dyad bonds when he studied the old, old,  _ old _ jedi lore. Essentially, if the bond between you and Rey was a magnet, its pull was losing its grip on you — and fast — when you died but that bit of energy from your mother was enough to kick start that magnetic field again.”

“But if our bond hasn't broken why can't I sense her? Why is all this destruction happening?”

Anakin blinked and furrowed his brow in a look of utter confusion. “I wish I knew Ben. I wish I knew. Dyads, the force, this entire realm of existence — it’s mostly a mystery. The only beings that would have the answer would be the Whills and even  _ I  _ don’t know if they’re real.”

Ben had about a billion more questions that his grandfather probably wouldn’t be able to answer, and all of them were at the tip of his tongue but a massive quake shook the stairwell they were huddled in. The shaking splintered the stone stairs under them, cracking deep enough that heat from the planet’s core began to seep through.

Anakin, pulling Ben close behind him, launched to his feet and sprinted down the steep staircase, bounding headfirst into the depths where the wan sunlight couldn’t reach. They kept up their brisk pace, miraculously keeping their footing in the dark, down the stairs and across a low ceiling cavern, until they reached a massive doorway carved out of stone. 

Ice blue light seeped through from behind the door, dimly illuminating some arcane iconography that definitely predated Anakin and Padmé. Along the edges of the door were long-worn out runes, overlapping with a crude star map of circles and lines that were engraved across the entire thing. At the center of it all was a mural of three beings: a frail looking old man with a long beard, a young woman with flowing hair, and a young man shrouded in darkness.

“Wait!” Ben pulled Anakin back from dragging the door open and running them both inside. “The place that grandma went. If this place is falling apart — what’s happening there? Is it safe?”

“We  _ really _ don’t have time for a theoretical exercise here Ben!” Anakin held up a hand to block a few pebbles that were raining down from the top of the cavern. “But in all honesty, if this place is already this bad then, no, I don’t think that other place is at all safe. But that doesn’t matter - the sooner we get you out of here the sooner I can go back and make sure Padmé and your mom and Luke and everyone are okay.”

“No.”

“Ben  _ please _ .”

“No! Grandfather listen to me,” Ben put himself between the doorway and Anakin. “I can make it the rest of the way on my own. I’ll have to.  _ You _ need to go make sure our family is safe. I can’t — I won’t let them sacrifice anything more for me. I need to do this. For them. For me...It’ll be okay. Probably.”

“You’re just as stubborn as your mother. And I don’t know where either of you get it from,” Anakin huffed, crossing his arms over his chest. But his eyes softened, and he smiled at his grandson. “I’m proud of you Ben. You worry about getting home, I’ll take care of the family. I promise.”

This might be the last time Ben ever saw his grandfather, the thought forming an unexpected lump in his throat. A man whose worst mistakes he practically worshiped as his own destiny, now helping him get, quite literally, a second chance. There was just one more thing he needed. 

Ben hugged his grandfather, and Anakin held him close.

“Bit of advice that no one in our family really seemed to grasp the first time around — guilt has a way of sticking to you, even when everyone else has already forgiven you, and warping everything around you. Don’t drown it Ben. Forgiveness is a powerful thing, especially your own,” Anakin said quietly before letting his grandson go. 

Ben felt Anakin watching as he pulled open the door, flooding the cavern with bright blue light. 

“Ben!” 

He looked back over his shoulder, one foot already over the doorsill and pulling him wherever was next. 

“Live. Be happy,” Anakin said with a smile before fading away. To someplace else.

Ben turned back to the path before him, momentarily blinded by the light. All around him the galaxy flashed before his eyes, that vast expanse of inky black and sparkling stars he was wandering in before he came to Varykino. But it was gone in a single footstep, and Ben stumbled onto a long, smooth platform in the middle of a massive monastery.

The room stretched high above him, with stained glass windows spanning the entire ceiling. The walls — not made of haggard rock like the cavern or stone like Varykino — but some smooth marble-like material that glistened in the bright blue light. Ben couldn’t make out the end of the platform he was on, which spanned out over a foggy chasm crackling with sparks of lighting, either because it was too far away or the fog was too thick to see clearly. 

He took another step forward and the room surged with energy. Lightning danced across the cavern, voices ghosted in the air, and the large circular mirrors lining the entire platform began to glow. 

Now what? He had promised Anakin he could do this on his own, but how exactly he was going to be able figure this out, Ben realized -- with an overwhelming sense of just how small he was in the grand scheme of the cosmos — that he had no idea.

“Alright Solo, just don’t think about the odds,” he grumbled, mostly just to give his ears something to listen to.

Suddenly, a bright blue butterfly fluttered down from the glass above and hovered in front of Ben. It flew forward a few feet, and paused, as if waiting for him to follow, and then disappeared into the heavy mist. 

A familiar voice rang in the back of Ben’s head. This one welcoming and oddly carrying a feeling of deja vu.

_ You’re not alone Ben. You never were.  _

He walked forward, his steps steady and certain. He didn’t know what was waiting at the end of the platform as the fog began to envelope him, but at least there was only one way to go. For the first time since he woke up flat on his back quite literally in the middle of nowhere, there wasn’t a warm layer of panic simmering at the bottom of his chest. His head wasn’t spinning trying to make sense out of where and when he was. It didn’t matter, he realized, because Ben knew he was at least on the right path now. He could  _ feel _ it, all around him, in the force. 

As he passed by one of the large mirrors, the soft blue light flickered and faded until he was looking in at a messy, sandy kitchen. A woman, with dark brown hair in a twisted knot at the base of her head and ragged tan dress, began busying herself with making a meager meal and packing it into a small knapsack. Ben had never seen her before in his life, but there was something familiar about her. Something soothing, but also sad.

“Come on mom! We gotta go!” a sandy blonde haired little boy came tearing into the kitchen, grabbing his knapsack and pulling his mom by the hand.

“Ani wait! Slow down Ani!” she called after him, the worry lines in her brow deepening. 

It clicked immediately for Ben. That was his great-grandmother. Shmi. The first Skywalker. A slave who gave up everything for her boy. 

Ben watched as his grandfather pouted when his mother tucked his hair behind his ear and told him why she wouldn’t be joining him at the jedi temple. It was a familiar feeling for Ben -- regret, loneliness making the excitement of something new just a bit bitter — and his heart twisted when Anakin agreed to walk away from Shmi. Those few steps carrying him farther away than anyone realized at the time. 

“ _ You can’t stop change anymore than you can stop the suns from setting,”  _ Shmi’s voice carried after Ben as he continued down the platform. 

The force had more for him to see, with each mirror he passed giving him a window into the past. 

He saw Padmé curled up on an upscale couch with the cityscape of the Coruscant skyline stretching out behind her. She was running her hand over her swollen belly and whispering down to her baby, as Anakin pressed a kiss to her forehead. 

There was even a glimpse of his own childhood — his parents - Han dressed like he just stepped off the Falcon and Leia still in her Senatorial robes - snuck into his room as Ben, probably only six years old, tossed in his sleep. They perched, one on either side, of his bed, keeping watch in that quiet little moment. 

But it wasn’t all peaceful. Nothing ever really was for his family, and Ben got to watch it all unfold, with every step pulling him deeper into his family’s dark descent. 

_ “We’ll be watching your career with great interest,”  _ Palpatine, still young and hungry for power, told a very small and star-struck Anakin.

Ben stared at that for a moment. His voice was different, less raspy and more dignified, but the same cold, merciless undercurrent ran through it. 

He watched Palpatine maneuver his grandparents like chess pieces, box his mother out of the Imperial Senate, bring his uncle to the point of no return, urging Luke to slaughter his own father. 

_ I have been every voice you have ever heard.  _

It wasn’t a lie. That voice - Palpatine’s voice - was there. Pulling strings around his family, pouring poison in his ears for years. It was him. All along. He was there in the shadows. 

Ben froze when he saw what next for him — his heart hammered in his chest, his palms started to sweat. Not this. He couldn’t watch this. 

It was Luke, dressed his white robes, lightsaber in hand and standing at the head of Ben’s bed. There was no mistaking the sound of flocks of nightswans singing outside - they were back at the Jedi Temple. A realization that filled Ben with cold dread even now. 

There was the unmistakable chill that came with Palpatine’s presence and a shadow crossed over Luke’s face. Ben couldn’t make out what whisper was being fed to his Uncle, but he knew the dark, stickly pull of it, the way it dulls any flicker of hope.

Luke lit his saber. Raised it high. And Ben - years younger - woke up with his nightmares finally before his eyes. 

Ben — the one still trapped in a bridge to nowhere, surrounded by a thick maze of fog — broke out into a run, desperation searing in his chest with every gulp of air. 

Things only got worse the further he ran. 

His gray haired mother cried, heartbroken, as a holocast of the temple fire blared in the background. Luke, somewhere amongst the stars and decades younger, slammed his hand on a wall and screamed into an empty room about Old Ben and some big lie. There was a flash of dead younglings — then Han, Leia, and Luke in a three-way screaming match about Ben being shipped off as he pretended to sleep in the next room over — then Padmé gasping for air as Anakin argued with some bearded man. Ben, cloaked in heavy black robes, ran his crackling crimson blade through his father’s heart. 

Ben slowed down, hunching over with his hands on his knees and just struggled to get his breathing back to normal. 

No more running, he decided. Not because of  _ him _ . Not from the past. It wasn’t fair. But choices were made. There was no changing it, Ben realized. 

The fog was blinding now, he could barely see his hand in front of his face, but Ben stood up straight and continued to walk forward. 

_ “There’s...there’s _ ”

It was Padmé. She was lying, sweaty and pale, on an operating table, her lips a faint purple. She looked up towards someone standing above her, Luke or maybe his mother crying in the background. 

_ “There’s good in him. I know it.” _

The vision morphed. The grey sterile medcenter melted into a dimly lit grassy cove, with a lush jungle sprawling outside. His grandmother’s dark hair and pale features were replaced by her daughter’s grey and wrinkled ones. Leia, clutching Han’s medal, laid on her back and closed her eyes, sending ripples out into the Force. 

“ _ Ben _ ,” she called him home. 

Tears were falling fast and free down Ben’s cheek as he watched his mother breathe her last, a smile on her face. But he wasn’t sad. Not anymore. That was it, he realized, that’s what Anakin was talking about. Forgiveness. Love. All of it unconditional. It was the only thing strong enough, bright enough to get rid of the darkness they had all buried themselves in.

“ _ I’m so proud of you...so proud...now I am complete.”  _

Ben rubbed the tears from his eyes and blinked as the fog lifted. But he wasn’t in the monastery anymore.

No, somehow he found himself on the cusp of a dusty, barren planet. He was doused in shadow, resting at the base of a massive cliff that stretched high above him. It was almost if it stretched beyond the atmosphere, going on for infinity, if it wasn’t for the two blaring suns handing high in the sky. Behind him, was empty space; the world between worlds as he saw it before. 

Something about this place felt familiar, but still off. It was like looking through a mirror, a world entirely inverted. But the glass was still in place, blocking him from getting out. 

But for the first time in a very, very long time there wasn't that itchy feeling of anxiety, or flash of boiling frustration. Ben was just...steady, looking around for the next answer. 

He lowered himself down, folding his long legs under him in the first meditation pose Luke taught him when he was ten. Slowly, he unclipped his saber from his hip and held the black hilt flat across both palms. The kyber, broken and bled, throbbed to life under his attention. 

Ben concentrated on that crystal, but he didn’t think of how he shattered it. Instead, he thought of the way his grandparents held each other with lazy ease, the way his uncle used to let him point out constellations on their long trips, the way his father let him fly the falcon while Chewie napped, the way his mother tucked him in at night. 

And he thought about Rey. Everything about Rey. Her freckles. Her terrifying snarl. Her laugh that would ring through their bond.

“Bring me home,” Ben whispered, closing his fists around the saber, feeling the kyber warm through the hilt. The Force began to churn around him. “Please. Show me the way.”

He opened his eyes and found himself in his father’s old tool compartment. On the Millenium Falcon. 


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: Rey is going through *a lot* right now. And drinking a lot because of it. It's not very graphic alcoholism but the reference is there, so please be aware if that's something that is painful or triggering.

“It’s no good, Rose -- the communicator is still down. I can’t get any transmissions in or out. We’re flying blind.” 

Kaydel, still dressed in her committee garb -- a black silk gown with shimmering sleeves and a haloed hairpiece sticking out of a sleek braided bun — put down the receiver and sighed as she slid into the booth across from Rose. She was already nursing her third glass of that Corellian wine she insisted Rey kept fully stocked in the Falcon’s cramped galley. 

What a pair the two of them made, shiny with sweat, worn and tired but still sparkling in their borrowed finery. They didn’t have time to change between dashing out of their meeting with the Loyalists and evacuating three full floors of Resistance delegates on a quaking planet -- but at least Kaydel had long slits in her dress. Rose had to run to the Falcon in a strapless ballgown that probably weighed about five pounds. 

Rose traced a finger over her silver headdress. It was a beautiful, delicate thing -- metal flower blossoms winding on either side, an engraved crescent hanging down and adorned with more shiny pendants that swung whenever she moved. But she wasn’t going to have a use for something this decadent anymore. And it was all her fault. 

“I’m sorry Nix,” she softly. The weight of the past hour was finally settling in now that the adrenaline was wearing off. Her bones ached with it. “This...everything. I messed it all up.  _ Eight _ months of work, negotiations,  _ kriffing  _ progress just gone! Like that!” she snapped her fingers to prove her point. “If I hadn’t -- If I had just --” 

“Just what?” Kaydel drowned her drink, slammed it down on the table, and cocked an eyebrow. “Just  _ not _ punch Admiral Atkin square in the jaw and knock him flat on his ass?” With a wince, Rose glanced at her knuckles, already angrily bruised and still stinging from that  _ particular _ incident. “If you hadn’t -- I probably would have. And I  _ clearly _ would’ve been a lot less effective than you.” 

The two laughed, and Rose felt a little bit of that heavy weight in her chest ease just a bit.

“Our negotiations were stalled for a while, and we all knew it,” Kaydel continued, pouring herself another glass. “We tried. And the galaxy will  _ have _ to see that. We didn’t start this...whatever comes next --” she took a steadying breath. “We’ve won one war. We’ll do it again if we have to.”

_ Whatever comes next _ ...Rose thought to herself, that nagging feeling of anxiety prickling in her stomach.

She stared out the nearby viewport, relieved that all she could see was a steady stream of streaking blue stars. The hyperspace routes had stabilized. At least they had that going for them. 

Poe strolled into the tight little galley, having long thrown off his velvet duvet and rolled up the sleeves of his loose grey undershirt, the ends of which were coming untucked from his pants. He followed Rose’s gaze to the stars outside and sighed. 

“It was rough there for a while but it looks like we got it sorted out,” he said, moving to fill his own glass with wine and topping off Kaydel’s. “This old girl’s hyperdrive is not what it used to be.”

“Okay no, it is  _ not _ the hyperdrive,” Rose pointed an accusatory finger at Poe. “Unless  _ you _ did any new idiotic manuevers in this thing -- which I’m sure Rey would  **love** to hear about -- that hyperdrive is in perfect condition. I customized and installed it myself.” 

“Al _ right _ ! Easy there slugger!” Poe threw up his hands in self defense, chuckling. “Here put some coolant on that, ya ruffian.” He tossed over a cold pack from the old little conservator in the corner and leaned against the counter. “So how do you explain our little stop and go earlier? I couldn’t get this ship to stay in its hyperlane for more than five minutes at a time.”

Rey walked in at that very moment, cutting across the galley, and poured herself a  _ very _ generous helping of Corellian whiskey, ignoring the open bottle of wine still sitting out. 

The little room hushed, only for a moment, when she came in -- wrapped in her dark brown cape with her hood drawn up. She had been quiet and sullen since they swung by the old Jedi Temple to pick her, Finn, and her students up. She made a beeline for her quarters first thing, not even protesting why Poe was flying the Falcon with the subalternators maxed out. 

Rose tried to keep the conversation from dropping  _ too _ obviously. “I don’t know Poe. Really. You saw the same readings I did. Gravity wells, seismic surges off the charts -- it was like an earthquake was rumbling across the entire galaxy...you’ve never seen anything like that right?”

“Never,” he mused, sipping his wine. 

Rose was about to ask Rey what she thought when suddenly the Falcon lurched sharply -- throwing them all flying to the right. Red warning lights, that Rose was  _ very  _ thankful she installed a few months ago, blared throughout the ship as a shrill alarm went off from the cockpit. 

Rey and Poe dashed to the controls, pushing past Finn, Jannah, and the boys in the main hall, with Rose and Kaydel gathering their skirts and following close on their heels. They all strapped themselves down as best they could, as the ship under them shuddered violently. 

The blue stream outside the main viewport bled into a disturbing swirl of red and orange and violet. The Falcon was thrown entirely on her side, old durasteel frame groaning with the effort to not entirely splinter apart. Above the din of screaming metal, strange sounds - almost voice-like - echoed in the space outside as flashes of  _ something _ other than stars whipped past the Falcon.

It was clear - terrifyingly clear - they were falling out of hyperspace. Again. 

“I don’t understand —how is this happening?” Rose groaned, having been knocked back down into her seat as the Falcon did a barrel roll. “It can’t be the ship. It just can’t.”

“It’s not.” Finn choked out. He was cradling his head - both palms pressed firmly against his temples - and both Temiri and Oniho were looking sick and pale.

“It’s a Force thing. Isn’t it?” Rose asked. “What’s causing it? What could be this bad?”

“I’m not sure.” But Rose followed Finn’s wary gaze...to  _ Rey _ . 

Their Jedi master was in full pilot mode now, her hands flying over the Falcon’s controls without any hesitation. Poe was perched in the co-pilot seat, trying to keep up. 

“Poe when I tell you,” Rey said through gritted teeth. “Rip the compressor out—“

“You said never to—“

“I  _ know _ what I said! Just do it.” she huffed. “As much as I hate it, the only way we’re going to make it to the rendezvous point  _ and _ not fall into a kriffing black hole is if I manually chart our course...and…”

“Lightspeed skip.”

“Yes. We have to skim through hyperspace or we’ll sink,” she punched a lever to her right. “On my mark - steady,  _ steady _ ….NOW!”

Poe ripped a tangled knot of wires and sparking chips from above the Falcon’s processor with a wince, and the ship shot forward. There was the barest glimpse of a stormy blue sea then Rey tapped in more coordinates and off they went, tearing through space.

********

Two hours after landing at Bespin, Rey’s hands were still shaking as she took a long sip of hot caf. The caffeine -- and the generous amount of Lando’s bottom shelf bourbon -- curled a lick of warmth down her throat and settled in her chest, but it wasn’t enough to thaw her out. Not really. 

She hadn’t stopped feeling cold since she climbed out of that hole with Finn. But it wasn’t that, it  _ couldn’t _ be that. 

She took another long sip, chasing the burn, and chalked it up to the six skips it took to even get to Bespin. It was double anything Poe had ever tried, more than anything the Falcon was ever built for - but Lando laughed when he heard the story, something about some maneuver Han tried back in the day. 

She slipped her hands under the wide white table before anyone could notice, but they were too engrossed in the debriefing. 

The Falcon was the last to arrive from Coruscant, giving the rest of the Resistance plenty of time to sort themselves out before leadership arrived. Maz was helping the padawans settle in, but everyone else had gathered in the conference room. Poe and Finn were giving everyone the rundown of how peace talks with the loyalists became rocky, how other factions wanted to pull out of the summit, and how the quakes gave them the perfect cover to dissolve the reunification negotiations permanently. 

Maybe this is why she felt so off, Rey wondered as she shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Bespin was so different from Coruscant -- sleek, simple, clean with elegant silver accents giving it a much more subtle dignified air compared to the grandiose golden halls and skyscrapers in the city. But here they all were, huddled around several massive holos with weapons and intelligence, plotting whatever was coming next. It was like nothing had ever really changed -- Not since Coruscant. Not since Exegol. Not since the start of the war. 

“Rose, Kaydel -- you two were the ones taking point in the negotiations,” Poe leaned forward in his seat, pressing his lips against his tightly crossed hands. “You worked the closest with Admiral Atkin. What are we looking at? How close are we to war?” 

Kaydel and Rose -- both sticking out among the rest of the casually dressed council members with their fancy clothes -- exchanged a somber look. 

“It’s not good Poe,” Rose started. “I’ve been keeping an eye on their ships in the dockyard, paying attention to Atkin’s boasting. They already have a sizable fleet.” 

“Fleets are just numbers,” he pushed back.

“Yeah and ours depend on volunteers,” Rose sighed. “We only survived Exegol because the galaxy didn’t want the Empire back….this is an entirely different kind of fight. Those people that helped us back then? What if they don’t want to jump into another war?” 

“People are tired…” Jannah added, nodding. “They want to see who can provide security. Who can lead better.” 

“So what does that mean for us?” Poe continued to press. “Any ideas on how we get ahead of this? We should start building out a fleet? Getting more recruits?” 

“This is going to be so much more than battle strategies,” This time Kaydel spoke up. Calm, unafraid, direct -- just like Leia used to be. “Whatever this fight is -- it’s going to be so much more than whoever has the fastest ships and biggest guns. It’s going to be about whose message the people want to believe in.” 

“It’s a fight for the very soul of the galaxy,” Finn was somber, probably a bit deflated that all his  _ special intelligence _ he swiped from the Jedi temple on the Empire weapons wouldn’t be so useful now.

Rey felt slick satisfaction at that. Not sure why, but it was there. 

“What about the jedi?” Beaumont offered. 

“ _ Excuse me? _ ” Rey gripped her cup of caf -- nothing could warm the ice in her veins now. 

“Rey you’re the strongest fighter we have,” Beaumont crossed his arms, and glowered. “And you already have a strong set of numbers with force powers. The loyalists don’t have that.” 

“Mate, they’re  _ kids _ ,” Finn jumped in. “How would that make us any better than the First Order?”

“It was the Jedi's duty to serve and fight for the Republic in the old days. Even padawans,” the short sandy-blonde man wasn’t backing down. “They all served in the Clone Wars. Isn’t your job to restore the jedi to their proper place in the galaxy?” 

Rey opened her mouth and lunged forward, intent on eviscerating that  _ irritating, condescending little --  _

“Look, we have still a bit of time,” Kaydel cut in -- slicing across the fight. “With the magnetic storm -- or whatever it is -- sweeping across the galaxy our communications are down. Not just on the Falcon but here on Bespin too.” She flicked the main holo at the center of the conference table, to a hazy planetary map of the galaxy. “But if  _ we _ can’t get anything out, then neither can the loyalists.” 

But as soon as the words were out of her mouth, the holo flickered and a crackling sound filled the room. The galaxy was replaced by an image of Admiral Atkin - his young face and strong jaw stark against his sharp black uniform, some modified version of what he used to wear as a First Order lieutenant. 

“This is a message to all citizens of the galaxy,” his voice came out  _ crystal  _ clear, completely unmarred by the storm. “We are facing a theta level natural disaster. You may have noticed your planets quaking, your ships falling out of their hyperlanes, strange sounds or visions clouding your mind. We don’t know the extent of the damage...we don’t know how many deaths. But this is a gravely dangerous moment. For everyone in the galaxy.” 

“Rose. Can you hack into the--” Poe whispered. 

“Already working on it,” as she fired away on her datapad. 

“We offer our protection, our services to all. Regardless of where your allegiance lay in the old war, where it may be now -- we must pull together, here...at this most critical venture. For there is a much bigger danger that threatens all our worlds,” Atkin continued. “And it caused this disaster.” 

Everyone in the room stilled. 

“The one they would have you believe saved our worlds from the Emperor’s seduction. The one they would have you believe will lead us into a new golden age. She is no saint. She is a murderer.” Atkin paused, composing himself for a moment as his voice grew thick with emotion. “She murdered our Supreme Leader Kylo Ren in cold blood. He came to fight alongside her. Helped her defeat the Emperor. And then she killed him, so no one else could dare challenge her power.” 

Rey felt every eye in the conference room fall heavy on her, but she was numb to their stares. All she knew was the knife this admiral’s words were twisting in her chest with every syllable. 

“And, as our peace talks were beginning to hit rocky ground with her comrades…”

“No,” Kaydel whispered. “He  _ can’t _ go there.” 

“She triggered this disaster,” Atkin concluded. “If she can’t control the galaxy...then it can no longer be allowed to exist.”

Atkin’s holo feed disappeared with a pop as Rose sighed heavily. 

“Got it. I cut off their feed at the source. Fried their internal processor too -- they shouldn’t be able to transmit any more broadcast communications for a while.” Rose said through gritted teeth. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get it done sooner Rey. Before he started spreading all those  _ horrible _ lies about you.” 

“He’s not lying.”

Rey rose quietly from her seat, hands curling into fists at her sides. 

“Ben Solo is dead because of me,” there was no waver in her voice. “And this...this storm...I don’t know how...but I feel connected to it. Somehow.” 

“But this is exactly why we need the Je--” Beaumont’s words got caught in his throat -- well, more accurately, Rey trapped them there as she wrapped the Force around his windpipe in a vice grip.

“You want to use the Jedi as a weapon, Beaumont? You’ve got one.” She squeezed a little tighter, enjoying the way his eyes darted with panic. “But my kids stay out of the fighting.” 

Rey released him, allowing him to slam down onto the conference table with a whimper, before storming out of the room to her own quarters. 

It wasn’t just the other people in the room she left unsettled. Finn felt it, the tremors in the Force reverberating long after the click of her boots faded down the hall. 

There was a sinking pit in his stomach — whatever happened in that, that  _ place _ on Coruscant…things were only going to get worse. 

Rose stood, ready to chase after their friend and put together broken pieces -- just like she always did -- but Finn stopped her with a gentle hand on her arm. 

“She needs space right now,” he told her. “Trust me.”

“What in the kriffing hell happened at that temple, Finn?” Rose spun around, hands on her hips. “Why does Rey think she’s responsible for everything?” 

Here it was. The moment Finn was hoping he could avoid -- facing whatever darkness took over, no,  _ broke free _ of his friend. 

He ran a hand down his face, gripped his chin, and took a deep breath before slowly, but steadily delving into the tale. 

He explained how Rey disappeared while he was sorting through old Empire records in the war room. How he heard a crash and bang distantly but was too wrapped up new specs to go investigating -- she was a Jedi. She’d be fine. 

Finn explained how he went looking for her when he noticed the time, and picked up on a cold chill that snared him like a fishing line, sinking a hook right into his fear. It led him to some kind of throne room - yes, Palpatine’s he guessed. It was completely destroyed. And recently too. - where he could make out a hurricane in the Force somewhere deep in the gaping hole that was in the middle of the room. 

Rey was down there. He just knew it. It was a feeling - and a bad one at that. He jumped down, finding her at the center of her very own maelstrom, the cavern they were in trembling around them. Finn explained how he watched her get pulled towards some kind of window - and Kylo, no Ben, was there with a few other people. And he tried to put into words the feeling that ricocheted through every particle in his body - warning him to stop her, somehow, as she reached out to touch him. 

“So I sent four blaster shots and blew the whole damn thing to hell,” he concluded, leaning down onto his elbows as Poe patted his back. “I thought, maybe, at first it was just that. The blaster fire triggered some kind of collapse. But it was Rey. Her power is doing this. I don’t know how - and I don’t think she does either.”

“So Rey’s a Sith.” 

All eyes snapped to Beaumont.

“That's why the Emperor wanted her. That’s why—”

“For once, don’t pretend like you know anything. About the Force. About Rey.” Finn growled. “She’s not a Sith. She’s not evil….” He paused, a bit deflated again. “She’s...in mourning.”

“Not to be  _ that  _ person here, but how does this change anything?” D’arcy popped up, keeping a wary eye on Rey’s friends. “Assuming Kylo Ren is out there somewhere, how would that not give a huge advantage to the loyalists? They’ll have their Supreme Leader back.”

“Because  _ Ben  _ is Leia’s son,” this time it was Poe who answered, slowly, voicing the truth they all elected to ignore. “And I know - trust me  _ I know _ \- what he’s done. Personally. But we wouldn’t have Rey if he didn’t jump into the fight.”

“This could break the loyalists’ messaging campaign couldn’t it?” Jannah jumped up, snapping her fingers and pointing to Kaydel. “We can expose them as liars and manipulators to the whole galaxy!” She paused. “I don’t know if it’ll be enough to completely win over the troopers, but it’s at least a crack in the armor.”

“So that’s the plan?” Rose asked. “We go look for Ben Solo and bring him back to rally around the Resistance?”

“No.” Finn was hunching over again, eyes locked on the holo in the middle of the table. It was now showing a flickering map of last known Loyalist troop positions. “We can’t all just go hunting for Ben. There’s too much to do in case war still breaks out. Rose, you have to get our ships ready for another firefight. Kaydel, you have to start contacting allies. Jannah...you and I have to go to the troopers. See if we can’t get some of them to our side.”

“But wouldn’t the best, most direct course of action be just to dedicate the brunt of our resources to bringing this kid in?” Poe pushed back against his co-general, looking baffled. “I’ve seen his lightsaber up close and personal. It’s even more terrifying that Rey’s. You know, with the crackling and all.”

“I...I don’t know how long that’ll take. I don’t know  _ where _ he is,” Finn’s voice grew quiet. “It felt true. It felt like it was him. Alive. But...I don’t even know...I don’t know if it was  _ real _ .”

“Oh it was,” a new voice made the entire council jump out of their seats.

An old Togruta was waiting outside the doorsill, in a crisp white robe, next to C3PO. Without a moment of hesitation, Poe fired two blaster shots at the intruder, point blank. 

But they were both easily deflected with two flashes of white. Lightsabers. 

“Who the hell are you lady?” Poe kept his blaster at the ready, as if it was going to do anymore good.

The golden droid wobbled forward, glad to be of use so quickly. “But Master Poe, as a general don’t you know? This is Lady Ahsoka Tano. She was an agent of the early Rebellion working with one of my previous masters — Bail Organa.”

Poe’s blaster dropped down to the floor, along with his jaw.

“You were Fulcrum. The first Fulcrum.”

She smiled and was about to respond when Finn jumped in. “I’ve  _ seen _ you before. You were there. In that, that place with—“

“You saw me with Ben Solo.” Ahsoka turned her stark blue eyes to Finn. “When I was with him in the World Between Worlds. If you take me to the girl, I’m here to help her bring him back from that place...hopefully before the galaxy completely falls apart.”


	11. Chapter 11

Rey sat, cross-legged, in the dark. She preferred the dark lately, it was quieter, peaceful in the solitude it could bring. Better for meditating, for centering herself, which was exactly what she needed to do right now. 

She could feel the tremors rippling out around her. There had always been disturbances in the Force, it wasn’t anything new. Sometimes there were calm ripples, like when Luke died, but there were also uneasy waves, like when the entire Hosian system was obliterated in a single heartbeat. 

But now, it was unlike anything she had ever sensed. The Force was chaotic and fragmented, churning like an ocean fraught with countless whirlpools. 

_ This is exactly why we need the Jedi— _

Rey curled her hand into a fist, tight enough that her dull fingernails dug into her skin, and somewhere out across the galaxy she felt a black hole rip open. 

She  _ had _ to get her emotions under control. 

“There is no emotion,” she whispered. “There is peace.” 

But was it even possible? For it to be  _ her _ power doing this? Yes, she felt unsettled and angry - especially after well,  _ everything _ , on Coruscant - and  _ yes _ somehow she felt tethered to the fraying edges of the Force but...it couldn’t be possible. 

No. It was more than that, she thought as tears pricked behind her closed eyes. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that she couldn’t have a moment, just one damn moment to be  _ upset,  _ to be  _ human _ without the universe collapsing in on itself. Rey’s breathing grew heavy, and she curled inward, hugging her knees - because it was just all too much. She didn’t  _ want _ that to be on her shoulders too. 

“There is no emotion,” her voice was cracking, even as the litany fell from her lips. Hollow but there. “There is peace.”

Shallow, shaky breaths slowly gave way to deep, shuddering ones as Rey wearily lifted her head up to look through a large window in the ceiling. It offered a stunning view of the sky above Cloud City, where most of Bespin’s haze was thinned out. Chewie had told her about this place, with its twin moons sparking in the sky. But they weren’t so brilliant tonight, their light dim and their silhouettes cast in shadow by some other celestial body she just couldn’t see. 

But it was enough to give her a bit of blunt clarity - this precious moment of unkempt control was a luxury she was running out of time for.

They were on the verge of war.  _ Again _ . And she couldn’t let things fall apart, she couldn’t let her friends just die because she was tired of fighting. Ben was gone. She had to accept that -- even as the truth of it twisted in her chest. She had her chance to save him. And she failed. Their bond flared to life back on Coruscant but now…it was back to just a phantom pain aching at the base of her skull. Rey swallowed thickly, acceptance bitter on her tongue. 

“There is no emotion,” she repeated, flatly. “There is peace.” 

_ There is just pain, my dear. That’s all you’ve been left with.  _

She winced at the truth of it. The rage it simmered in her. 

_ But you deserve more...you deserve to keep looking...you deserve to get something that makes you happy for once.  _

The moonlight was a weak source of light in her quarters, as Rey glanced over at her bag, tucked under her cot. She stashed it away in here for safekeeping as soon as she got off the Falcon. No one had noticed, not even Finn, the secret she hid in it. 

It was half buried in the rubble of her grandfather’s throne, the one that guarded the entrance to that cavern. The golden pyramid was so small she almost missed it when she followed Finn out of the shoot, but it glinted -- almost insistently -- at the edge of her vision. Finn was too busy transmitting with Rose and double checking schematics to notice her picking her way through the debris to slip it into her bag, and he certainly missed the way it glowed crimson in her hand. 

It was so similar to a wayfinder…the memory of those cursed artifacts made Rey shiver. But even then she realized there was a chance. If it was anything like those Sith navigators, maybe, just maybe, it could show her something else. Maybe another way to save Ben? 

She knew it was wrong, even as she lifted herself up from the ground. She reminded herself it was a dangerous path, even as she took a single step forward. She scolded herself for being selfish, even as she continued to cross the room without hesitation. Hope was pain. Pain was hope. The two emotions blended together like a river, and she was already swept up in the current. 

_ There is no ignorance my dear. There is knowledge. The Jedi believed that.  _

She kneeled down, reaching for the bag…

_ Your chains shall be broken...the Force shall set us free _

A series of knocks -- two long, three short, and two more dragged out -- at her door snapped her out of her reverie. She knew that quirky rhythm meant Finn had come to check on her. A hint of a smile pulled at her lips; maybe he had swiped some more of Lando’s bourbon. 

But Finn wasn’t alone at the door. A familiar face she had never actually met before was with him. 

“You….you were…on Exegol, your voice. And on Coruscant -- Ben, he was...” 

“Ahsoka Tano,” the old Togruta offered with a soft smile. “Can we come in, Rey?” 

Rey fumbled backwards, making room for Finn and this Ahsoka Tano to step over the doorsill. The Tortuga took a look around the room, with her back turned as Rey gestured wildly at her new guest. Finn shot her a --  _ just go with it _ \-- kind of look, which...she guessed was the only choice she really had. 

“You’re probably very confused right now,” Ahsoka said, finally looking back at the pair of them. 

“Yeah, I’d say that’s a fair assessment,” Rey said slowly. “No offense, but how do I know you? And  _ why _ exactly are you here? If it’s to join the war effort, I got to say I’m a bit su--”

“No, not that. Not yet anyway,” Ahsoka patted one of the two saber hilts on her hips. “I’m here to help you. Help you get Ben Solo out of the World Between Worlds.” 

“He’s alive?” The question fell from Rey as the air caught in her chest. “I’m not crazy? He’s out there? He’s okay?” 

“Yes, yes Rey. He’s okay. It’s okay...just breathe,” Ahsoka tried to smooth Rey, who felt her knees weak with relief. “You may not realize this, but you’ve been tapping into this...this space between spaces… a sort of bridge between the living and dead, a conduit of the Force, the nexus of space of time,” the old jedi paused. “But, you see, this is part of a sort of package deal. You share this power with Ben Solo.”

_ The dyad bond _ , Rey realized. 

“Sounds trippy right?” Finn nudged her arm. 

Ahsoka offered another soft smile, walked across the room to a small desk where Rey had haphazardly dumped her collection of sacred jedi texts, and picked one up. Her bony fingers danced over the pages nimbly, with precision before quickly finding whatever she was looking for. 

“So Luke  _ actually _ did it.” She said softly to herself, before turning back to Rey and Finn and showing them a page in the book. It was one of the ones Rey had 3PO and Beaumont trying to translate...one Luke --  _ and Ben -- _ had scribbled notes on. The old Togruta tapped one of the diagrams in the corner, a circle of moons that were all shaded differently. “This is the Phases of Mortis. I believe it’s the answer we’re looking for. It’s how you can get Ben out.” 

“You believe?” 

“Well it’s been an unsolved mystery for eons. But we have all the pieces.” Ahsoka flipped through a few more pages, pulled over a few more books, and showed her an ancient star map -- that “vergence scatter” Rey noticed Ben wrote about -- and several more pieces of celestial iconography. “I believe these eclipses are the key. Somehow. I promise. We just need a little time to figure it all out.” 

It was a  _ miracle,  _ and Rey was ready to cry with happiness, jump up and down like a lunatic -- but she plummeted back down to reality with a sharp crash. No Passion. Serenity. Pragmatism. The hope gurgling up inside her felt like poison. 

“We don’t have any time.” Her voice was quiet. “The war is about to start. I--I can’t go off on a personal mission like this. I can’t pull resources away from that. I can’t abandon my kids. It would be selfish.”

_ So not like a Jedi. _

“Rey, listen to me. You have to do this.” Finn clasped onto Rey’s shoulder, and firmly tilted her chin up. “Maz can watch over your padawans. They’re with family here. And we already figured out how to take care of the rest.” She refused to meet his eyes, so he dipped down and pressed on. “Rey. Please. You need to do this for your own sake. And if you won’t -- then do it for the Resistance. We..I think, I  _ know _ that if you could bring Ben back...it could shift the tide.” 

Rey didn’t know what to say. Tears stung at her eyes and she flung her arms around her dear friend. 

“You called him Ben,” she sniffled into his shirt. 

“I heard he’s good with a blaster,” Finn laughed. “We could use that if this gets real bad.”

Ahsoka cleared her throat. “Not to add any pressure, but this is so much bigger than a war.” 

She and Finn winced as another quake rippled out across the galaxy, knocking a small moon somewhere into an entirely new orbit --- but Rey felt...fine. 

Ashoka grabbed Rey’s steady hand. “I’ve seen this before. A bond like yours, partially severed...and…it was disastrous.” She turned her eyes towards the window, up at the pale moons. “We need to reunite the dyad as quickly as we can…before the Force tears itself to shreds.” 

************

Bespin was always quiet at night - too quiet. There was no mechanical humming like on the Falcon. There were no bugs buzzing or birds chirping like on Ajan Kloss. There weren't even any muffled sounds of people still milling about at night. Just silence. 

Which left Rey without any distractions. 

Laying flat on her bed, she stared up at the window pane as hazy clouds swirled past the moons. Everyone had gone to bed hours ago, but she was still wide awake. Just like the night before. And the night before that. 

Ahsoka had been working hard with her the past 48 hours, combing over every legend, every ancient scribble, every scrap of speculation that popped up throughout the jedi’s history. And they didn’t have much to show for it. Just more theories - the latest being Ahsoka’s insistence that Rey could access this limbo-realm during an eclipse. Problem with that was they had to find the right planet, with the right celestial bodies above - they weren’t even sure if it  _ had _ to be moons or suns or anything - all at the right time. 

_ You know what can help you find the answers… _

Rey tucked her arms tigher around herself, as her thoughts drifted to the little pyramid in her bag. She meant to mention it to Ahsoka, really she did and maybe she still should, but every fiber of her being resisted it. 

People feared her now, after everything with Atkin and what she did to Beaumont and the whole crumbling galaxy. They tried to hide it, with their cheery greetings and attempts to bring her caf as she studied the old jedi texts, but Rey knew. She could  _ sense _ how they walked on eggshells around her. And if she was being honest with herself - another luxury of the quiet night - it was bothering her less and less. 

_ There is no ignorance… _

Here, in her oasis from being Jedi Rey, she could drop her facade of optimism. The reality was they were running out of time. And frankly - she was running out of patience.

_ Trust in the Force Rey...the Force shall set you free… _

Rey closed her eyes and took a deep breath - centering herself in the decision she was about to make. She needed answers. Now. She  _ deserved  _ them. And if she was the only one willing to look in places that had them...then so be it. 

She swung her legs over the edge of her bed, unphased by the sting of the cold durasteel floor on her bare feet. It was hard to maneuver in the dim light, as she tried to make as little noise as possible but she made it across the messy space to her wardrobe without tripping. Rey looked for dark layers -- anything to help cling to shadows just in case anyone else was wandering around - charcoal leggings, a long sleeve black tunic, and her black hooded poncho that swept down to the floor. Her boots she kept tucked under her arm -- just to make sure she didn’t make any footsteps.

The pyramid glowed softly when she peeked inside her bag to make sure it was still hidden away inside, almost as if it was eager to sense her presence. She snatched a small holodrive from inside her desk. Ahsoka would need the books -- and clearly notice if they were gone -- but she had no idea Rey had been secretly scanning copies for her own to take with her...just in case this exact moment ever came up. 

Rey stood still, surveying the mess around her. Was she missing anything? The Falcon was already restocked with food -- Chewie was too busy finalizing repairs to notice Rey poking around the galley. She had spare clothes in her quarters on the ship. 

A glint of silver caught her eye. Luke and Leia’s sabers… 

Rey swallowed thickly. The boys got what they needed to make their own from the temple. And Maz knew enough to help them. But what about the other students, the ones too young for their own blade? Logically, she knew she should leave them behind. Forge out on her own; with her own saber. Still, she had that feeling -- some heavy weigh in her gut -- that told her to bring them. As if she couldn’t speak to their spirits, but maybe, just maybe if she brought their lightsabers, Luke and Leia would watch over her one last time. 

She hesitated for a moment, unsure why she felt so...unsure. But she didn’t have time for indecision. Not yet. Not before she even made it off the planet. So she snatched up the two silver hilts, added them to her bag, and clipped her own saber to her hip -- then she crept out into the night without another look back. 

There were a lot of winding hallways and crisp sliding door’s in Lando’s Cloud City, but she made it to the Falcon without getting spotted. Or so she thought. The ramp was lowered, Chewie was nowhere in sight, and the Falcon was unmoored — Rey was about to duck inside when a shrill chirp stopped her dead in her tracks. 

“BeeBee-8!” She whispered, turning back sharply. The orange and white little droid rolled up to her, tipping its head to the side with a long whirl. “Shhh! You have to be quiet. They’ll hear you.” 

It chirped at her again. 

“No I can’t tell you where I’m going. I’m sorry.” 

BB’s chirping got decidedly louder. 

“ _ Shhh! _ Yes, yes it is  _ classified _ . So don’t give me that tone.” She sighed when the little droid rolled up against her legs. Stubborn as always. And she blamed Poe. “BeeBee, please. You can’t come with me. Poe..the others, they need you here.” 

It shot back with an insistent flurry of chirps and beeps, but at least it was trying to keep its modulator quiet now. 

“I--I know. But I need to do this on my own. I can’t ask anyone to help with this. And we’re running out of time,” Rey crouched down to the droid’s level, seriously considering powering it down herself and ditching it on the loading dock. But it pushed against her again, insistent this time, before rolling around her and up the ramp. “You want to come with me?” 

It stuck out its retractable arm and held up a little flame -- finally she got it. 

“Alright, then,” she couldn’t help a small smile as she followed the droid into the ship. “But don’t blame me if Poe gets pissy at us.”

There were butterflies in her stomach as she settled into the pilot’s seat and looked out at Cloud City one more time. No one was spying out of any windows, no one was running after her. There was no turning back now, she realized as she took a deep breath, turned on the thrusters and pulled away from the loading dock before the noise woke anyone up. 

Her muscles only relaxed when she made it out of Bespin’s atmosphere and left the planet out of sight. She slumped in her seat, leaving her elbows on the arms of the chair and cradling her head. She made it out, but where exactly was she supposed to go? 

BB8 rolled up beside her with a curious beep. 

“Does it  _ look _ like I know?” Rey snapped. The regret was immediate, especially with her little friend rolling back a bit - stung by the outburst. “I’m sorry. Really I am. I know you’re just trying to help.” She patted its head reassuringly. “It’s just...just that there’s a lot riding on this and I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do or how I’m going to do it.”

She eyed her bag behind the droid. The answer could be as simple as whatever was in that thing - but, she realized, BB was here. And if anyone happened to scroll through its memory bank one day and found out….she didn’t want to think about it. She had to keep her cool. 

“Hey, while I try to figure out our coordinates why don’t you power down for a bit? Charge up? We could see a lot of action once we get where we’re going.” 

BB8, loyal as it was, also had a habit of rolling along until its power chip was completely drained. So it didn’t put up much of an argument to her suggestion, but it didn’t go far, preferring to park itself in the corner of the cockpit. Just in case Rey needed to boot it back up in a jiffy.

Still, Rey waited a few minutes after the droid’s central light dimmed and its processor stopped whirring before she slowly and carefully pulled out the pyramid from her bag.

There wasn’t really much time to inspect it back on Coruscant and too many wandering eyes on Bespin, but she had all the space she needed on the Falcon. Rey turned it slowly over in her hands, tracing the odd runes carved along its obsidian edges. Sith. Just like the knife she found on Pasaana. The crimson aura flickered between her palms, steady, almost like a heartbeat. Whatever this thing was...it may not be ancient but she could  _ sense _ its power. 

She had no idea how to open it - a puzzle that pulled at her - but something made her hesitate, holding the pyramid as still as the breath in her chest. 

Luke had warned her once, that she was too brash, running straight to the dark for answers. 

But Luke wasn’t here. Luke wasn’t helping her find the answers, was he? 

“There is no ignorance,” she whispered fiercely. “There is knowledge.” Rey squeezed the pyramid in both hands, using the Force to add pressure, and brought it close to her lips. “I call on the Force to set you free.”

The relic clicked three times in her hand and begun to vibrate dangerously. She opened her hands and it floated upwards, with the clasps at each of its vectors released. Its light became blinding - painting the entire cockpit in a scarlet hue - and when Rey could finally bear the brightness, she saw a small holo figure looking up at her.

“Finally, a worthy apprentice.”

Between the raspy voice and the scarred face hidden under the shadow of a black silk hood - it was obvious this belonged to her grandfather, Darth Sidious. 

“You’re dead.”

“I may not walk amongst the living, my apprentice, but the Dark Side is a pathway to many abilities...and it is our tradition to share that knowledge, so our  _ legacy _ can live again.” Sidious smiled, distorting the deep wrinkles on his pasty skin. “Isn’t that why you opened my holocron? To accomplish such a feat...you must be so brave, so daring.”

She wasn’t afraid. Not like on Exegol. And she wasn’t angry. Not like on Coruscant. Rey stared back at the holo’s sinister grin, unflinching — Sidious couldn’t hurt her now. But he was going to give her the answers she needed. The answers she  _ deserved _ . 

There was a poetic kind of justice in that, she decided. 

“Tell me how to access the world between worlds.” Her demand came out as a snarl. “I know you found a way to tamper with vergences.  _ Tell me _ .”

The holo of Sidious stilled for a moment. “A large request indeed...quite ambitious, my apprentice.” His form flickered and starmap - the same one she copied from the old texts - took his place. “There are many natural nexuses that grant access to the Netherworld of Unbeing. But only to a select few. Those whose souls have bonds that stretch among the stars.”

“But there is a way to manipulate this power,” the holo changed again, showing an imperial floor plan with a chamber buried deep inside highlighted. “All my research...all my prototypes are at the facility I tasked to watch the edges of chaos. Together, we may discov—“

Rey shut the holocron closed with a snap. There was sweat on her brow and she was entirely out of breath — but it was worth it. She knew  _ exactly  _ where she needed to go. 

She swiveled her chair towards the navicomputer and plugged in the coordinates to a place she never thought she’d have to go back to.

“Well BeeBee,” she said to the still-powered down droid. “We’ve got to get back to Jakku.” 

She tried not to think of her parents - or the twisted knot of  _ everything  _ she learned about what happened on that dusty rock - as the computer plotted out a course that wouldn’t require any hyperlanes. She turned the Falcon over in the right direction, slipped it into autopilot, and leaned back against the seat. 

Her head was buzzing. Imagines of tally marks flashed in front of her eyes.  _ Come back!  _ Her father stabbed. Her mother handing Plutt money.  _ Noooo!  _ Laughter as her parents stumbled out of cantina, unaware she could spy on them from the window of Plutt’s hut.  _ I’ll show you the darkside.  _ A shadowy Kylo Ren back lit by a burning village.

Rey stood up abruptly - her head was pounding. There was a weight at the back of her skull, a dull ache like it had been hooked up to the back of her ship and dragged around for a few klicks. She blinked a few times, trying to get her bearings, and then trudged off to the galley. A cup of strong caf should be enough to snap her out of...whatever this was.

But it was a waste of a trip. As soon as she emerged from the galley, sipping her caf and enjoying a temporary reprieve from her headache, she dropped the entire steaming mug on the floor. Because, suddenly, she wasn’t alone anymore. 

Standing in the main hall, fiddling with the Grimataash on Han’s holo-dejark board, was the wild shock of black hair, the broad shoulders, and the soft brown eyes she spent the last year mourning. 

“Hi Rey,” Ben grinned. 


	12. Chapter 12

Growing up there was a long list of things Ben wanted to be. And, while a bit mortifying to admit now -- and painful if he thought too much about it -- most of those things could be traced directly back to watching his hairbrained father adventure around in this very ship with Lando and Chewie. 

He learned how to fly, where the best illicit hyperlanes were, proper blaster maintenance, how to jimmy open the back of a transport and roll out without getting turf burn -- none of which made his mother happy. Though, in retrospect, Ben realized that maybe, just maybe, it was preparing him for precisely this moment. 

Because evidently  _ “Hi Rey” _ was not the right thing to say. 

Those two little words quickly transformed her shock into fury -- with her narrowed, wary hazel eyes and her fists perched on either hip, Rey looked about two seconds from slugging him. 

But luckily -- again, in the loosest definition of the word -- Ben had seen his father navigate this exact look before, any time the two of them snuck back into their Chandrila apartment and found Leia waiting for them in the living room. 

So Ben pivoted. Ruffled his hand through his hair with what he  _ hoped _ was a sheepish smile and offered, “You changed your hair.”

The soft chestnut waves falling around her face  _ were _ an alluring distraction. For as long as he knew her, Ben couldn’t remember a single time her hair was ever just relaxed and loose like that. It was the first thing he noticed when he sensed her shuffle out of the galley -- that and her sparkling eyes and her soft lips parted ever so slightly in surprise.

And it worked. 

Rey’s stance shifted, not by much, but she wasn’t outright glaring at him anymore  _ and _ there was even the tiniest tilt at the corner of her mouth as she shot back, “Same sweater.” 

He chuckled, a light and airy thing that came as naturally as breathing around her. “Next time I end up in a cosmic purgatory, I’ll be sure to try and update my wardrobe.” 

And just like that, it was like he opened an airlock, sucking out all the ease between them. A silence fell over the tiny space as they just stared at each other. Both rooted to the spot. The memory of the last time they were physically in the same room together -- and particularly what came  _ afterward _ \-- loomed heavy in the quiet. 

“How did you even get on this ship?” Her words were clipped and her eyes were shiny. 

_ Good going Solo,  _ he cringed.

“I have a natural knack for sneaking onto the Falcon. Or, at least that’s what Dad used to tell mom,” he tried to keep his voice light, but Rey’s face remained pale and withdrawn. “You should have seen Chewie’s face -- one time he found me stowed away in one of the pantry cabinets in the galley. Although...in hindsight, throwing all of his wookie cookies on the ground and just leaving them there was the probably opposite of subtle.”

“Oh,” was all she said. “Chewie put a scanner on that cabinet ages ago. Thinks I keep swiping those things.” 

Words died between them again and they shifted awkwardly. 

This is not what Ben pictured their reunion would be like. Granted, it wasn’t like he had a lot of down time stumbling from portal to portal to mull it over, but there were moments he’d let himself think wistfully about it. About how Rey would be crying --  _ happy  _ tears -- and he’d cross over to her, pull her into his arms, and kiss her properly this time. 

But this….

What exactly was he supposed to say?  _ I know I kinda  _ **_died_ ** _ last time -- and I’m still not entirely sure if that whole thing in the cave counts -- but would you, I don’t know -- and you definitely don’t have to say yes -- but maybe want to make out again?  _ Or how about --  _ You kiss...good? well?  _ Or maybe mention something like  _ I really like that thing you do with your --  _ no. No. He’d kick his own ass for that. He should just shrug and hope she gets what he’s going for. 

_ Force _ , communicating with Rey was so much easier when they had a couple of lightsabers between them. 

“I..I should probably clean this up,” the soft lilt of her voice shattered his chaotic spiral. “Sticky floors, you know. Makes it hard for BeeBee to get around.”

“Oh! Right, right. Here, I could, um, I could help--” He started to say.

“No, it’s fine I got --”

“Really, it’s no prob--” 

Ben only took one step, one solitary step, towards Rey before there was a distinct rumble somewhere outside the Falcon and all hell broke loose. The ship lurched. Something big -- and  _ hard _ \-- slammed into the bottom of the hull with a deafening thud. The next thing Ben knew the Falcon went careening backwards and wrenched them apart - he was tossed sideways over the dejark board. Rey flew backwards into the galley. The entire cabin was doused in a red light. And it all took less than thirty seconds. 

“Fraggit!” Rey shouted above the din. “What in the  _ zotting frag-bolts?  _ Stupid kriffing…” 

Rey kept muttering her litany of colorful curses while she crawled out of the galley, glancing over at Ben -- who braced himself between the bench and the dejark table -- as the Falcon took another hit. He raised an eyebrow at her, curious to see this side of her in person. 

She launched herself up from the floor, and staggered over to him. His chest tightened, his stomach ridiculously fluttering in a way that had  _ nothing _ to do with how the ship was getting knocked around, as she clamored under the table next to him. Her chest canted towards him, and Ben held his breath -- leaning in ever so slightly -- memorizing every line of her face as she inched closer. 

But a breath later, Rey pulled away -- bonding tape and rusty cruciform ratchet balanced in one hand while she gripped the top of the table with the other to pull herself up in one fluid motion. 

Cheeks flaming, Ben scrambled after her, but she was all business, sparing him the embarrassment. 

“Look we don’t have much time,” there wasn’t a hint of hesitation in her voice. “There’s no way Chewie was able to reinforce the fusible core injection molding before I left. And if we take any more hits like--” the ship rocked violently again. “Well, like  _ that _ \-- the inlet manifold is going to break off.”

“There aren’t gas masks?” 

“Sure, somewhere, but does it  _ look _ like we have time to hunt them down?” Rey snapped. “Because I don’t want to gamble with those vapors, do you?”

“Your ship’s a mess.”

“ _ Your _ dad gave it to me this way!” 

Ben raised his hands in defeat -- because, frankly, she had a point. “Okay, okay. I can hel--”

“Look I’m going to go take care of this before we slowly lose our ability to breathe,” She cocked her head to the right and raised an eyebrow. “Think you can handle flying for a bit without killing us?” 

Ben blinked at her, more than a little dumbfounded.  _ Did...did she  _ **_not_ ** _ know he basically grew up on this thing? _

“Well?” She snapped her fingers. “Can you handle the Falcon?”

_ Apparently not.  _

“Yeah. Yeah I can handle….” But she was off, sauntering down the smoky hall, before he even finished his sentence. 

“Can I  _ handle _ flying this piece of junk?” Ben grumbled as he trudged down towards the cockpit. “I mean, it’s not like I commanded an entire fleet of  _ warships _ or anything.”

But all of his complaints vanished the second he looked out the viewport and saw exactly what the problem was — the Falcon was caught in a chaotic asteroid field with massive chunks of debris hurtling in every direction. 

“Kriff!” The curse fell numbly off his lips as he threw himself into the pilot’s seat, haphazardly strapping himself in. 

There wasn’t a moment to think. Ben flipped off the autopilot and jerked the ship sharply to the right -- just in time to dodge a head-on collision with a massive hunk of space rock. The sensors were spazzing out -- probably overwhelmed and clouded over with the fine layer of dust floating between the rocks -- so he was flying without a full 360 degree reading, which meant he had to track the trajectories of the biggest blocks of debris in his peripheral vision. 

It was a skill he was apparently  _ very _ rusty at. Luke’s old ship, the Grimataash, the four different TIEs Snoke gave him -- they all had backup sensors for the backup sensors in  _ pristine _ condition. He tried to cut back in and make a beeline for a clearing, but missed a droid-sized rock until it hit the back of the ship, forcing the whole thing up and immediately over a  _ much _ larger chunk.

_ Focus kid _ , his dad’s advice seemed to live in the old parasteel walls. 

But it did the trick. His hands flew over the control panel, finding every lever, every switch right at the tip of his fingers, even though his eyes never left the turbulent maze outside. And the Falcon hummed back to life in response, as if she realized how close to death they all were and  _ relished _ in it. 

“Come on old girl,” Ben whispered to the ship as he wove her through a tight asteroid cluster. It might have been too risky of a move, he thought for a second as they scraped along the bottom of a massive boulder, but -- he was flying the Falcon. This is what she was  _ made _ for. 

He tried to keep the ship as steady as he could for as long as he could, knowing the smoother the trip, the faster Rey could get the manifold patched up and they could all avoid, well,  _ suffocating.  _ But the asteroid field wasn’t giving him too many options. They kept heading entirely in one direction, making progress across the rocky labyrinth, but it wasn’t thinning out. If any, it was if the debris field was thickening and growing more turbulent. 

He spotted what  _ looked _ to be a clear path out directly down a vector to their right when one of the biggest asteroids spontaneously splintered just ahead -- an  _ physical impossibility  _ **_and_ ** , more pressingly, a logistical nightmare. 

He gripped the steering yoke tight in both hands, but the rest of him was relaxed, calm. This maneuver was easy enough in his TIE, and, sure  _ technically,  _ it carried more than a little risk to try it with something as big and wide as a Corellian freighter, but he wasn’t crunching the odds.

“Brace yourself!” He called over his shoulder, hoping he was loud enough for Rey to hear over whatever tangle of piping she wedged herself into. 

“For what?” She responded immediately. “What the kriff--” There was a short yelp -- and more curses -- as Ben threw the Falcon into a tight corkscrew roll down and to the right, pulling it up short and punching up the thrusters as far as they could go to launch themselves clear of the debris field. 

Ben let the ship gain a little more distance than was absolutely necessary - just in case there were any more erupting asteroids trying to bludger them into space dust -- and slowed the Falcon down after it was a good several klicks away. Rey slid into the co-pilot seat across from him, just as he was starting to turn them back around to survey the area. 

“Not bad, Solo,” she offered, but kept busy inspecting the control panel. “She’s still in one piece.”

“You know I’ve flown before right? I  _ designed  _ my own ship.” 

“I know,” she finally turned to him, a smirk playing at her lips. “It flew like a dream. Not very durable though.” 

“Not all us like it so rough, Rey.” 

“Oh come on, Ben,” she leaned back, coy and teasing as she gave him a once over. “You and I both know that isn’t true.”

Ben’s tongue was heavy and dry as he tried in vain to swallow. He wasn’t  _ quite _ sure they were still talking about their skills in a cockpit. The word made his cheeks crimson. 

“Y-you know I think I recognize some of these constellations,” he stammered, deftly changing the subject. Rey barely suppressed a giggle. “This is the Anoat sector. We’re not far from Bespin, are we?”

“Far enough.” 

Suddenly Ben wasn’t laughing anymore. 

“There’s no asteroid belt out here. There never has been.” 

The realization dawned on him as the Falcon finished turning back around, and he stared out at the hunks of rock still hurtling out into empty space. There weren’t many planets or moons this far out in the system, and even fewer were populated. But, he knew these stars, these coordinates. He knew the rocks they just flew through...stood on them once, when they were still whole.

“I trained here,” Ben was mesmerized by the rubble. “With Luke actually. We were doing research.”

The dwarf moon of Ano was gone. 

It was astounding really. Terrifying. Insidious probably. But astounding. It was just  _ eviscerated _ . 

“People lived there?” 

“No. Not for a long time anyway. Just some old Jedi ruins on a dead rock.” Ben sighed. At least there was some kind of silver lining, but still, an  _ entire _ moon. Just wiped out. 

His stomach started to churn as he mulled over the very obvious question of:  _ how _ ? Was it possible? After everything - all they sacrificed - they hadn’t stopped Palpatine’s plan, had they? Did one of his psychotic Death Starships manage to slip out of the atmosphere on Exegol?

There was a worse option, he realized as his blood turned cold. Was this potential ship never on Exegol to begin with? He  _ was _ utterly distracted at the helm of the First Order and he missed so much - a Sith-sized coup at the top of the list. Maybe he missed an entire fleet of planet killers too? 

Ben watched helplessly from the cockpit as the destruction continued to expand out into empty space, wondering how many other worlds were destroyed because we was weak and stupid and so completely, utterly outmaneuvered at every step. 

_ Wait… _

He leaned forward in his seat abruptly, a tiny gasp escaping from his lips. 

“What?” Rey sounded hopeful. “What do you see?”

“It wasn’t a destroyer.” He pointed out at one of the largest chunks of what looked like Ano’s mantle. “Look.”

The moon was still crumbling before their very eyes. The massive hunk of rock Ben pointed to splintered into a dozen pieces as easy as egg, and those pieces shattered too. Smaller and smaller until they were microscopic, maybe even subatomic. Ano wasn’t just broken -- it was  _ breaking _ itself apart. 

There was no weapon -- First or Final order built -- that could do this. 

_ What in the zotting hell is going on? _

He couldn’t sense anything. No disturbance, not even an unsettling ripple in the Force. 

“So this is what Ahsoka meant,” Rey’s gaze was unfocused, and she looked withdrawn again.  _ He couldn’t sense anything off her either.  _ “This is what the Force tearing itself apart looks like.” 

There were a million questions he wanted to pepper her with --  _ How did she know about all this? When did she meet Ahsoka? How long has this been going on? Are other planets affected?  _ But he knew that look. Set, tense jaw. Wide eyes. The slight, subtle tremble running up her spine. 

It was exactly how she looked on Takodana, when she stared fear in the face as it cornered her in a forest. 

He was only a monster in a mask to her back then. Her fear was palpable, as connected to the Force as she was, but he only thought about the information he needed, the questions her very existence posed. 

So, instead, this time he just said, “Rey. Whatever this is, you’re not alone.” 

She stiffened at his words and refused to look back over at him, instead busying herself with checking the flight metrics on the far side of the console. 

“Let’s just focus on flying,” she said, her words a bit strained. “We need to figure out exactly how far off course we are now.” 

“Okay.” He didn’t reach out to touch her. He didn’t try to get her to just stop fidgeting and  _ talk _ to him. If this is how she wanted to do it, he could follow her lead.

He turned to the little navicomputer on his left and tapped the screen a couple of times until the digital lines stopped looking so fuzzy. 

“Um, Rey?”

“Hmm,” she kept idly checking levers he  _ knew _ were completely fine. 

“Just out of curiosity,” he started, slowly starting the Falcon down the right vector for the coordinates she put in. “What could possibly possess you to go back to  _ Jakku _ ?” 

She did stop then. And slowly,  _ so  _ slowly, she turned to pierce him with her hazel eyes, fierce as a storm. 

“You.” 

“Me?” He huffed, absolutely flummoxed. “There’s answers about me on that sand trap you couldn’t just ask now?” 

Rey kept her stoney stare level. “It has answers on how to get you back.” She paused, took a deep breath. “Because you’re not really here, Ben. And we’re running out of time.” 

There it was. One of them  _ finally _ addressed the giant bantha in the room. It was undeniable -- the way that he was here, living and breathing, but also...not. He didn’t even know how he ended up here. As real as the cockpit felt and as close as Rey was, there was still a smart part of him that sensed the world between worlds, the warmth of his saber’s kyber in his palm. 

They were like this once before. After everything on Starkiller Base. The Force would just keep pulling them together, as if they were both caught up in the same current. 

At first, Ben wasn’t sure if their bond survived what happened on Exegol -- the agony in his mind after the fact didn’t exactly bode well for their chances -- but how exactly could one soul just be completely severed? But the fact that he was  _ here _ , that somehow, he found himself on the Falcon at exactly the right time for Rey to be by herself. That wasn’t fair fortune.That was them. The dyad.

And as weak as their connection might be right now, as unsteady as it felt, Ben remembered how much time he  _ wasted _ before, waiting for the bond to rip them apart again. 

Not this time. 

Not anymore. 

He struck like lightning, closing the distance between them and pressing his lips to hers. Rey jolted at first -- and even  _ he  _ was a bit lost to the intensity -- but she quickly melted against him. Her hands slid up to fist at his chest desperately, as he reeled her in closer; one hand trailing up her arm, down her side, and wrapping around her waist. Ben relished in the shiver it earned him, his lips pausing their assault ever so quickly to smile against hers. His other hand wound itself in her hair at the base of her skull, pinning her as he delved deeper into her mouth. 

The last time they did this they were happy. Blissfully happy. Naively happy. 

But this. This was raw and desperate. The way their lips danced, the way they chased each other for more. He gave no quarter, licking inside her, sucking at her bottom lip, but Rey matched him with every breath, every moan she swallowed whole. 

The Falcon suddenly shuddered and jarred them out of their intoxicating bliss. 

Ben whipped his head back towards the viewport, desperately scanning the empty space around them for new threats. His hands tightened around Rey’s waist, needing to feel her warmth under his fingertips even if --  _ especially if _ \-- they were about to face some new lethal foe. 

“Ben,” Rey whispered. “Look!” 

The ruins of Ano were silent. Unmoving. And most definitely no longer breaking apart. They just floated there, like normal space rock. 

Normally, this was the kind of puzzle Ben would dive into headfirst and lose himself to for months, years even. But something else much more pressing caught his attention. 

It was subtle. A quiet shift, like stars moving along the cosmos. But it was there. A pressure in the back of his head, a warm current, a thin golden thread tying him, his entire essence, to the girl next to him. 

Ben cupped Rey’s face in both his hands, gently stroking her the top of her cheekbones with the pads of his thumbs, and rested his forehead against hers. 

“Stars, I’ve missed you.” He breathed. “I’m sorry Rey. I’m sorry I couldn’t get back sooner. Those were the longest two days of my life. Felt like  _ kriffing  _ years sometimes.” 

He felt her tense under his hands and watched a kaleidoscope of emotions flicker in her eyes -- Confusion. Guilt. Anger. Gut-wrenching Pain. It all permeated their entire bond. 

Ben opened his mouth to reassure her, to ask her what he said, what he did wrong, but Rey spoke first. 

“Promise me,” she peered up at him with those hazel eyes. “Promise me you’ll come back. That we’ll find a way to bring you back.” 

_ I’m not going anywhere now.  _ He wanted to promise, but even with their bond finally starting to recover, it still felt like sand slipping through his fingers. There was no way of telling just how long they had. 

So, instead, he let his vow go unspoken and sealed it with a kiss. Chaste at first. Delicate. But it was just kindle to an ember they couldn’t ignore, and just like that they were aflame. 

It was a mess of hands pulling hair, slipping under fabric, and Rey’s arms winding around Ben’s neck and his hands tugging at her hips. All of which the Falcon -- ironically -- was  _ not _ great for. In some small, barely audible part of his brain, Ben thought it was just one more attempt at humor from his father. 

Ben struggled to shrink in his seat, trying to carve out room for Rey as she clammored over the chairs into his lap. Which wasn’t easy given that she was still trying to pull his sweater up and off at the same time. She slipped in her desperate rush and her legs flailed out behind her, hitting something -- a dull, metal clang and a low hum filled the cockpit -- but they were both too lost to hear it. Rey successfully straddled him, trapping his thighs under her own, which was already enough to turn Ben’s brain fuzzy. He pressed hot, desperate kisses across her chest, along her collarbone, up her neck -- groaning as she squirmed against him every time his lips touched her skin. 

“Ow!” Ben yelped and jumped up out of his seat, knocking his head against Rey’s. 

Tiny sparks of electricity faded against his pants, but his right leg was suddenly,  _ painfully _ , numb. The culprit -- a white and orange  _ ball _ \-- inched towards him, taser out and aimed at his face. 

“No! No BeeBee!” Rey -- still holding her forehead with one hand -- stuck her other arm out to stop the little droid, and remained unflinching as it let loose a barrage of chirps and beeps. “He’s a friend. Yes.  _ Yes _ , I promise.”

_ At least I know where it learned to curse like that _ . 

The droid huffed and rolled back slightly, but kept its taser at the ready. Rey slumped against Ben with a sigh, looking entirely disheveled with her tangled hair and swollen lips. 

Ben grinned up at her. “Is that droid the--”

“The one you kidnapped Poe  _ and _ me  _ and _ blew up Maz’ castle for? Yeah, that’d be the one,” Rey cocked an eyebrow. 

“Ah. I don’t think it likes me.” He looked over at the little thing, a bit sheepishly. “Sorry about all of that…” 

“BeeBee-ate.”

“Sorry about all that BeeBee-ate,” he finished. “Truly. I’m embarrassed. And for anything else I’ve done to make your mechanical existence difficult.” 

It responded with a low series of crude beeps. 

_ Rude. _

“Eh,” Rey shrugged as she slid off him and pulled him up from the pilot seat. “We’ll work on more team building exercises later. Let’s eat. It’s a long flight to Jakku.” 

Ben flipped on the autopilot and followed her out, keeping a watch on the ornery little droid out of the corner of his eye. 


	13. Chapter 13

“So Bastilla has one of them suspended by her throat with one hand, right? And at the same time she dueled with a saber staff -- it’s actually a very interesting design. I think you’d like it. Maybe we try to find some archival designs for it later -- anyway she was fending off kriffing Darth Revan with the other.” 

Ben was practically giddy, waving his right hand dramatically as he retold this particular part of his story for the fifth or sixth time. 

Rey just sighed, took another bite of the joomba nibblers they threw together, and snuggled deeper into the nook Ben made for her. With the hyperlanes suddenly steady enough to make a long-distance jump, and BB8 more than willing to monitor the proximity radar, the Falcon was cruising easily to Jakku. So, they had been sitting like this - her legs thrown over his lap, one of his arms wrapped around her shoulders, the other orchestrating his story - on the little booth in the main hold for hours. 

He told her all about the weird in-between place he woke up in. Sometimes the story was somber, like when he told her about what he saw on Mustafar. Other times it was downright painful, with Ben struggling to get the words out -- like when he explained how he got to Mortis and saw her or how he got to Ahch-to and saw her or how he got to some weird dystopian future and saw her raggedy old-woman body mind wiping Poe. 

Neither one of them had to put the pain of getting ripped away from each other every time into words. It still ached in their chests. 

But then he also got like this. Animated. Curious. Trying to work out exactly how he got from one place to another. Or “how intricate and meticulous the craftwork was” back some billion years ago. Or just obsessing over some other person he wished he ran into. 

It made her smile, watching him like this. Made her picture him as a kid, scribbling notes into a book and staying up late to read for fun. 

“Revan is the old jedi master? Or the Sith?” Rey asked around another bite of joomba. 

“Both. And so any—“

“Wait - who wiped who’s mind again? And which galactic war was this? Don’t look at me like that! I mean how many damn Republics did we have?”

Ben sighed, more than a bit indignantly, “You never learned about the Sith Wars? What did my mother even teach you??”

“Hey. Hey.” Rey bumped his shoulder with hers and pointed a finger at him. “Not all of us got to learn at a fancy jedi academy with a library. And knowing all about these dead kriffing ancient people didn’t help when I handed a beating to you on Starkiller, now did it?”

She grinned wickedly at him, pleased that she could still shove him to the metaphorical ground when she needed to, but Ben wasn’t interested in the banter. Instead, he became very intent on the patterns he was tracing against the soft fabric of her pant leg. Wisps of his dark hair dipped to cover his eyes as he bent down and pressed a light kiss to her top her knee.

“I saw that too, you know.” Another kiss, this time on her calloused palm. “Your life, growing up on Jakku. The AT-AT. The nightmares. Kriffing Teedo and Plutt.”

“I’m pretty sure Plutt’s dead.” She offered and shoved another joomba in her mouth. “If that makes you feel any better. When you came to Takodana.”

“Not really,” he huffed, blowing a stray dark lock out his eye. “I’m sorry I didn’t find out about you sooner. I’m sorry I couldn’t do anything from that place.”

Rey watched him fiddle at her knees with a familiar warmth, a cozy feeling that was rare but there on Jakku. She remembered the sleepless nights, the anxiety that chased her in her dreams, she remembered the dark outline in the shadows that kept watch and lulled her back to sleep. She remembered the voice that followed her, an echo she heard her entire life — remembered it never quite matched the answers she came up with, like trying to fit a sphere into an oval shaped hole.

_I’ll come back, sweetheart. I promise._

And it was like the picture on a broken holo came into focus for the first time in her life. 

“But you did, didn’t you?” Rey slipped her finger under his chin and delicately tipped it up towards her. She stroked his hair with her other hand, watching the ease drift across his face. “I guess, I wasn’t waiting for nothing. I just needed to come find you, at the right time.”

A comfortable silence stretched between them, with Ben resting his cheek against her knees as she played with his wild mop of hair. A simple moment, filling her like a deep, calming breath.

And it was over the second she saw BB8 rounding the corner towards them. She tasked it to monitor the integrity of the hyperlanes - so the fact that it was hightailing out of the cockpit only meant one of two things. They were about to be randomly rocketed out of hyperspace at lightspeed - again - or….the Resistance managed to patch themselves through. And they weren’t going to be happy.

“Ben,” Rey roused him and untangled herself from his lap, urging him up and towards the galley. “Can you go make us a fresh brew of caf? We’re gonna want to be heavily caffeinated by the time we get to Jakku.”

She waited until Ben was safely tucked away in the galley, surrounded by the whirring of Poe’s caffito machine, before whirling back on the little droid that was waiting for her.

“Patch ‘em through BeeBee - and please do me a favor and keep the volume down a couple decibels?” 

BB8 whirred sarcastically and a miniature Poe Dameron materialized from its holoprojector. 

“Oh, there you are!” Poe started in on her - though blessedly at a quieter volume than his droid typically defaults to. “You’re not dead. Look Finn! Our favorite runaway isn’t dead!”

“Poe, look I—“

“General.” He ground out. “Right now, to you, it’s general.”

Rey clenched her fists, biting back the venom on the tip of her tongue. It wouldn’t get her anything but a screaming match when he was like this.

“Look. I get that being a jedi means you have some big mystical responsibilities,” he started, his arms crossed tightly over his chest. “I get it. I respect it. But you also made a commitment to this. To the Resistance. To me and Finn. To the people willing to _die_ for you and for the galaxy.”

“Working on your rallying speech have you?” Rey grumbled under her breath.

Poe heard, his eyes narrowing, but he kept on, stiff as ever. “You just vanished. Overnight. No note. No plan. Which means we’re forced to just blindly adapt. We’re down a ship, down rations, down our best fighter - no, don’t play humble with me Rey - and we’re missing my droid.”

“BeeBee wanted to come!” 

“Held you at taser point, did he?” Poe snapped back.

Finn was standing next to Poe this whole time, the tendon in his jaw spasming with how tightly he clenched it. He wasn't saying anything - not jumping down her throat like Poe was but certainly not rallying to her defense either.

Rey gave it a go anyway - if either of them was going to understand why she did it, why she just vanished, it would be Finn. He wouldn’t like it, but he’d get it. Right?

“Finn, come on. Can you please just explain to Poe that we weren’t getting anywhere. I had to do something,” she tried. 

“Don’t go running to him like that!” Poe protested. “Just because I can’t lift rocks or psychically connect with kriffing porgs doesn’t mean I’m oblivious, Rey.” 

His hands were getting animated, his composure quickly slipping. “I get how important it is to find Ben. I get that you sacrificed a hell of a lot and this is everything to you. But this isn’t just your mission. We need him for this war too. And just going off like that put us all at risk - you most of all.”

“I’m sorry. For not at least leaving a note,” Rey finally admitted. The words were more bitter than she wanted to admit. “But I’m not going to apologize for not letting you get in my way.”

Poe opened his mouth - probably to start listing off some of his more choice insults - but Finn took mercy and cut him off.

“Fine. At least you work fast.” Rey cocked her head, confused. “How long until you and Solo get back here?”

Rey turned around to see Ben staring wide-eyed at her and the holo, his face drained of color and guilt painted across the worry lines on his brow.

He tipped up the two steaming cups of caf he had delicately carried over from the galley, and sheepishly half-whispered, “I just wanted to ask if you wanted some sarlacc cream. I found some in one of the—”

“Is—is he talking about my sarlacc cream? The one I had to bribe that kriffing loyalist on Coruscant for?” Poe spluttered. “Don’t you dare ingest that Rey. Solo do you hear me? Under no circumstances is Rey allowed to even _smell_ it.”

“Uh,” Ben blinked, looking a little bewildered. “Okay...sure thing, Dameron. No sarlacc cream for her.”

Ben handed Rey her plain cup of caf and settled down next to her, whispering, “What? No court-martial?”

“No for you at least,” Rey muttered back. “Jury might still be out on me.”

“Your friends are very committed to the whole ‘all's fair in dejarik and war,’” he muffled the words around a sip from his cup.

Finn - with a pointed look at Poe - tried to refocus their conversation, “If we’re all good with _kriffing_ _sarlacc cream_ can we get back to strategizing please? Rey. What’s your status?”

She was grateful, really she was, for the tactful redirect but there was no easy way around it.

“Afraid this isn't permanent,” she said, gesturing to Ben. “In fact, I’m not even sure how you can even see him right now. We’re headed...somewhere -” she ignored Ben’s quizzical eyebrow. “to see if we can find some answers. Something to make this stick.”

Poe and Finn exchanged a look.

“So, we’ll have to count you out then,” Finn said somberly. “With the hyperlanes stable right now, it’s great for getting our ships out but the loyalists were able to amplify their message. It’s moved up the entire timetable. We’re moving out in 24 hours.”

It finally dawned on Rey that her friends weren’t wearing their normal clothes or even any of the Coruscanti garb they brought with them to Bespin. Poe was decked out in his bright orange flight suit and Finn was in all black, his chest padded with a sleek layer of discreet armor. They had blasters hanging from their hips, with extra plasma mags strapped on. Battle ready.

War was imminent.

“Sorry,” Ben piped up, raising his hand and looking utterly lost. “Bit behind here, so this might be a dumb question—”

“Eh, you were dead, so we’ll allow it,” Poe shrugged.

“Thanks...I think?” Ben scrunched up his face for a second, before pressing on. “Can someone just give me a rundown here? Who are the loyalists? What kind of message is getting out?”

It was a bit of a marvel really, watching Ben’s face transform as Poe and Finn gave him the basics of the First Order loyalists — how they were building out their own confederacy, feeding a wave of chaos in the power vacuum to spark another civil war. Rey could practically see the wheels grinding along in his brain, rapidly processing every single military detail. All the ease, the lightness she was beginning to associate with Ben sharpened into something so quintessentially Kylo. But...they were never really different were they? 

Rey supposed it made her think of Leia. They both had that look — same stiff brow and set jaw. A look of a soul that had seen too much loss and mined its own suffering when duty called. 

“Chipping away at the troops is brilliant,” Ben mused, after Poe laid out the big picture of their plan. “If these guys are staying true to the F.O. protocols, then the troopers are vital to whatever power struggle is happening behind the scene. Trust me, this Admiral Acktin was it? Yeah, he’s just a front. The real players won’t be looking at the troops like cannon fodder anymore —“ He offered a pained look at Finn. “Sorry…I — that’s not —“

Finn held up a hand to cut him off, a bit of an edge in his voice. “But it’s true. I’m just hoping we can use that to our advantage. Convince them they have a bigger stake in this. That they don’t have to stay blindly loyal to these guys.” 

“Two former troopers ought to do the trick,” Ben nodded slowly, entirely in strategy mode. “You especially. Hux made sure your face was plastered in every conditioning unit. But that means you’ll be going in with a target in on your back — and that’s not even considering how closely they’re going to be looking for behavior anomalies.” 

“Rose and Kaydel have been listening in to their communique for months now. We have a pretty good idea of the protocols. Any luck and it’ll be enough to help us blend in.” 

“You won’t need luck.” Ben snapped his fingers and sat up straight, his excitement jittering down the bond. “You can use my personal splicer codes. I can help calibrate it with your tech. I found it after Snoke, well…you know.”

“Was mysteriously assassinated and left as a stump on the throne?”

“Poe!” Rose, somewhere off cam, hissed. 

“ Anyway it was designed to let you listen in on all their official channels on a separate frequency — that way the rest of you can keep in contact.” 

Rose shoved her way into the frame - much closer to the cam than either Poe or Finn had been so her head just floated by itself — “That’s some rarefied tech there Ben. Practically theoretical. How are you sure it’s gonna work?”

“My knights and I used it all the time,” Rey recognized that signature note of bitterness in his voice, even if Ben did manage to hide it well behind a smirk. “Why do you think Hux thought he was some kind of crypt-level Coruscanti spy? He had no idea we were listening in the whole time, making sure he was feeding the right messages along.”

This was a miracle. Logically, she knew that. It was nothing short of a cosmically-divine intervention that Ben was fitting in so well with her friends. That they were actually working together. That they meant what they said when they told her they would’ve loved to meet him. 

So why couldn’t she be happy about it? Why couldn’t she jump in on this little strategy session? Why was she leaning back against her seat, armed crossed tightly across her chest, and - fine, she could admit it - _fuming_?

Maybe it was just Poe getting under her skin. Because really, what right did he have? Yelling at her just because she took her ship on her own mission? Force forbid it messed up any of General Dameron’s plans - as if there were any that weren’t made in a grand total of five minutes. 

Maybe it was that they didn’t appreciate what she was trying to do. Didn’t understand that - let alone what it meant to her - if she couldn’t pull this off, there wouldn’t be a galaxy to save? 

Or maybe, if she wanted to be really honest - which she didn’t - maybe it was that they couldn’t, or just didn’t want, to realize how little time she had here? She had been gone, what, a few hours? Ben appeared out of nowhere after days of searching and they couldn’t even give her a little bit of kriffing time to enjoy it? No. She had to come rushing back to save them. To save the galaxy. Again. 

Rey huffed out a deep breath forcefully through her nostrils. Inhaled deeply. And exhaled again - trying to clear her head. Finn gave her an odd look but she warded him off with what she hoped came off as a reassuring smile. 

This wasn’t her. Wasn’t what she wanted. She loved her friends, would jump through blaster fire for any of them. Any time. She wanted to help end, really end, this war...right? It had to be the stress getting to her. That had to be it. 

“You know this makes you a traitor right?” Finn’s words hung heavy across the transmissions’ static. Unlike Poe and Rose, Rey was there. Rey remembered. Finn kept his gaze trained on Ben, who just nodded, which for some unfathomably stupid boy reason was enough. “Good. About time Solo. About time.”

Rey pushed herself up from her seat abruptly, earning another concerned look from Ben, who was already instinctively following her movements. Annoyance flickered in her chest as she hurried out of his reach - just a flash, not enough, she hoped, to ripple down their bond.

“Everything okay?” He asked her, the question wrapped in soft oblivion.

She pushed him back to the booth as gently as she could, feeling Finn and Poe watching her carefully.

“Fine!” She shrugged, the picture of nonchalance. “You keep helping them prep. One of us has to get ready for our descent.”

“But the proximity alert hasn’t—”

Rey held up her arms to cut him off, gesturing to the thick sleeves under her poncho. “Just need to change first — I’d pass out in a minute wearing these.”

She plastered on her best ‘everything’s fine’ smile, one she perfected after eight months meeting politicians on Coruscant. Kept it slapped on her face as she backed out of the room, leaving Ben wrapped himself up in walking Rose through whatever he could. Made sure it didn’t slip, not even alone in her bunk, when she peeled off her dark layers and tugged her old white clothes again. Ignored the protests from her aching cheeks and kept smiling, until she was tucked away in the cockpit, far away from the war chatter. 

_Stop that_ she chided herself. _It’s a good thing._

_But it’s not what you wanted. Nobody seems to care what you want._

She shook her head, desperate to just stop thinking for a moment. Just a few moments.

_Your friends just pulled you back in. Ben just jumped back in. War is all you’ll know._

“That’s not true,” she ground out. But her words sounded hollow, even in the tiny space. “This will all be over soon.”

Staring out at the blue haze of hyperspace, the twists of who knows how many supernovas blurring by, she couldn’t help but wonder. Wonder if war was all the galaxy would ever really know. 

This entire year, it was like she was fighting a current, swimming upstream to keep from flowing back into chaos and blasterfire. And yet for everything they did this year, everything they thought they accomplished, she was back in the clothes she died, in racing to complete her mission and throw herself back into the fray. A cycle, always spinning. 

Maybe time didn’t matter. Maybe peace didn’t matter. Maybe none of it mattered.

She pressed her head to her palms, curling her fingertips against her temples, as if she could fend off the voice inside her own head. As if it wouldn’t just echo in her bones. 

“No,” It was a weak plea, muffled her head still cradled in her hands. “No I don’t- I can’t think - I don’t want to be like this.”

She didn’t really choose to fight last time. But it’s not like she could walk away now.

_You could win. Could crush them all and rule over it. Break the wheel and fashion it all new….no more suffering. No more fighting._

Slowly, ever so slowly, Rey raised her head back up. Because the answer was so clear. The Loyalists. That’s who she needed to blame. That’s who was making her life miserable. If it wasn’t for her grandfather and the first order and now these wannabes - everything would be fine. 

And the only way she was going to get a chance to finish this once and for all was to make it to Jakku. Rip the last useful piece of treasure from the planet’s husk and get what she needed to bring Ben back. Then she’d have all she needed to bring peace and stability and order to her galaxy. 

She deactivated the hyperdrive with a swift flick of the lever, and waited as the streaking stars faded in the viewport to reveal the dry, yellow, dump of a planet she used to call home.

“Jakku.”

Ben’s voice was low, like gravel, and it warmed her to her core. 

“Yeah. The irony isn’t lost on me either,” she said, busying herself at the controls as Ben plopped into the Wookie-sized co-pilot’s seat.

She watched him out of the corner of her eye, instinctively going to adjust the thrusters as they transitioned into orbit. Ben had followed her cue and changed - must’ve found some old clothes in a box Chewie refused to clean out. He was wearing a thin beige shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and exposing thick forearms chorded with lean muscle, paired with a black tactical vest. He kept the same leather pants and boots, but a familiar brown utility hung low on his hips with his saber and a blaster swinging from it. 

“Stealing a blaster?” 

She figured now wasn’t the best moment to point out he had picked up one of father’s personal favorites. Maybe he already knew. Maybe he didn’t want to know. 

“Saber’s busted.” His words were clipped and he kept his eyes plastered to the control board. “For now. Figured a blaster is better than a potential detonator.”

“Right. Right.”

Ben sighed. Not a long, drawn out sight. No, it was sharp and forceful. “Is this it? This is how we’re gonna play it?” He turned his head over towards her for a moment before snapping it back to his tasks. “We’re just not going to talk about what went down back there? Why your friends don’t know we’re going to this trash compactor of a planet? Why you seem to be running away from a fight they need you for?”

The edge to his voice. The way he pressed the buttons and yanked on his control yoke way harder than he needed to. She recognized all of it - signature petulant Ben Solo. 

But she drank in the sight of it. She could deal with his moods. She could deal with the silent frustration that wafed off of him and threatened to suffocate them in this tiny cockpit. She could deal with wanting to devour him and with her very next breath need sucker punch him just to shut him up for a second. 

Because it meant he was alive. That he was next to her. And she’d do anything to keep him that way. 

“No.” 

“Come on Rey,” he slammed his hand down on his chair, all pretense of calm burned away. She didn’t flinch. This side of Ben she knew how to handle. “As much I as could personally attest to the First Order’s ability to adapt and strike back with a—”

Rey scoffed, “Oh yeah, good for you and your genocidal faca—“

“Would you just let me—”

“All hail the Supreme _kriffing_ Leader—”

“ _Dammit Rey,”_ he spat. “Don’t try to distract me. I know they’re not capable of an entire war machine this quickly. Two days? That’s not enough time to do a proper headcount let alone convince the entire fracking galaxy you murdered me. Yeah. Your friends filled me in on that bit.”

“Don’t Ben,” her words came out in a snarl. She didn’t know what the searing heat in her chest was more of - panic or frustration. “I’m — I can’t—“

“How long was I gone Rey?” Calm as ice, he leaned back in his chair, face stone cold and crossed his arms over his chest. Waiting for her to crack. “ _Say it._ The truth. How long?”

“A year.” Rey spat, tears stinging in her eyes. He did it. Popped the last piece of this peaceful bubble she got to have. “A whole _kriffing_ year Ben.”

She braced for him to yell, punch something, shoot a barrage of blaster fire into one of the walls of a ship he used to hate so much. But it never came. Instead, she watched Ben crumble next to her - his massive frame curling in on its self - as he turned his soft brown eyes up to meet hers.

“Why couldn’t you just tell me that?”

Silence was her best answer as she shifted in her seat.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Ben whispered - to her, to himself? She didn’t know - as he reached out and gently ran his hands over her arm wrappings. “I missed your lifeday.”

“There wasn’t much to celebrate,” she said as she quickly pulled herself out of his grip. 

But, soon, you’ll never have to leave again, she promised. 

There were other questions she knew he had, other secrets he knew she was holding onto, but for once Ben didn’t press. Didn’t force her into the light of truth. It would come, Rey knew that, but for now he had enough to chew on. 

“Configure the planetary scanner, will you?” She let out a quiet breath as he dutifully obeyed. “We need to pinpoint the Plaintive Hand so I can lock in our planetfall trajectory.”

“What exactly are we looking for? There’s not much out there except for the shipwrecks of a couple old star destroyers right?”

“Not exactly,” Rey turned the Falcon to the correct vector and began their descent. Dark space lightened around them as the baked, dusty ground of Jakku came up to meet them. “There’s a place. Been untouched since the Battle. Legends say it's cursed.”

“And why do you think it will have what we need?”

Rey took a deep breath - a familiar sensation, a cold that slithered over her skin on Coruscant tingled at the edges of her senses, “Because my grandfather told me to go there.”

Ben didn’t blink. He didn’t push himself out of the chair and demand they turn around right now or ask her if she was out of her mind. He didn’t look at her with a single ounce of fear.

He just nodded, took her free hand, and just said, “Okay."


End file.
